Socialism  and 
Motherhood* 

John  Spargo 


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Socialism  and  Motherhood 


BOOKS  BY  JOHX  SPARCO 

SOCIALIST  THEORY 

The  Spiritual  Signifieince  of  Modern  Social- 
ism. 

The  Substance   of   Socialism. 

Sidelights   on    Contemporary    Socialism. 

Applied   Socialism. 

Socialism  and  Motherhood. 

The  Socialists,  Who  They  Are  and  What 
They  Stand  For. 

Socialism,  A  Summary  and  Interpretation  of 
Socialist  Principles. 

Capitalist  and  Laborer. 

The  Common   Sense  of  Socialism. 

Socialist  Readings  for  Children    (illustrated). 

SOCIAL  QUESTIONS 

Syndicalism,  Industrial  Unionism  and  Social- 
ism. 

The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children    (illustrated). 

The  Common  Sense  of  the  Milk  Question 
(illustrated). 

BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDIES 
Karl  Marx:  His  Life  and  Work   (illustrated). 
The     Socialism     of     William     Morris     (illus- 
trated). 
The  Marx  He  Knew   (illustrated). 


SOCIALISM 
AND    MOTHERHOOD 


BY 
JOHN  SPARGO 


XE\Y  YORK 

B.  \V.  1IUKBSCH 

1914 


Copyright,  1914,  by 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


Printed  in  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

MY  WIFE  AND  COMRADE 

MARY  SPARGO 


FOREWORD 

BECAUSE  I  have  written  somewhat  ex- 
tensively upon   various   phases   of   ma- 
ternity and  child  welfare,  many  Social- 
ist comrades,  in  various  cities,  asked  me  to 
lecture    upon    the    relation    of    Socialism    to 
Motherhood. 

In  response  to  these  invitations  I  delivered 
a  lecture  entitled  "  Socialism  and  Mother- 
hood "  in  many  cities.  The  substance  of  the 
lecture  somewhat  amplified  is  contained  in 
the  following  pages.  It  is  my  hope  that  the 
little  book  will  make  clear  the  promise  of 
Socialism  to  many  mothers  and  drive  the  fear 
of  Socialism  from  their  hearts  and  minds. 

J.  S. 

"  Xestledovvn," 

Old   Bennington,  Vt., 

End  of   October,   1913. 


PROLOGUE 

OVER  the  Garden  of  Life  dark  clouds 
hang  like  a  funeral  pall.  The  sun  is 
darkened. 

Through  the  garden  sounds  a  moaning 
cry  —  the  cry  of  children  hungry  of  body 
and  soul.  They  cry  tor  Bread  and  Beauty, 
for  Life  and  Love. 

Poor  little  flowers  of  the  garden!  They 
droop  and  fade  for  the  blight  of  Poverty  is 
upon  them. 

A  mother,  broken-hearted,  weeps  because 
ot  the  desolation  of  the  garden.  The  beauty 
and  pride  of  the  flowers  that  glow  like 
flaming  torches  amid  the  gloom  of  the  gar- 
den do  not  comfort  her.  She  sees  only  the 
drooping  and  fading  flowers. 

But  lo !  a  "\oice  is  heard  in  the  garden. 
It  speaks  from  the  heart  of  a  sunbeam: 

"  I ,  Socialism,  Spirit  of  Life  and  Progress, 
come  bringing  priceless  gifts, 

7 


8        SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

"  Bread  and  Beauty  I  bring  to  the  chil- 
dren. Life  and  Love  to  all  the  blossoms. 

"  Freedom  and  Hope  I  bring  to  thee,  O 
Mother  of  Men,  and  to  thy  children  Op- 
portunity." .  .  . 

But  the  mother  does  not  believe.  Fear 
holds  her  in  bondage  to  her  grief.  She 
weeps  and  will  not  be  comforted. 

The  Voice  speaks  again: 

"  Fear  not,  O  Mother  of  Men.  I,  too, 
am  a  mother. 

"I  have  borne  all.  I  have  mothered  — 
/  have  nourished  Life  "H'itJi  Hope.  I  have 
endured  the  Great  Agony. 

"Fear  me  not:  I  am  thy  Sister."   .   .   . 

Now  the  sun  dispels  the  clouds  and  the 
Garden  of  Life  is  filled  with  rosy  light. 

The  drooping  flowers  lift  their  heads. 

The  moaning  cry  is  turned  to  laughter 
and  song. 

The  mother  rises.  The  light  of  Hope  is 
in  her  eyes.  She  walks  blithely,  like  one  in 
whose  heart  Faith  is  reborn. 


I 

THE  ANGEL'S  GIFTS 

i 

ONE  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  mod- 
ern sculpture  is  The  Captive  Mother, 
by  Stephan  Sincling,  the  Norwegian 
sculptor  whose  art  unites  to  the  weird 
witchery  of  Grieg's  music  the  profound 
psychological  insight  of  Ibsen's  dramas.  In 
The  Captive  Mother  Sinding  symbolizes 
the  supreme  tragedy  of  modern  society,  the 
Bondage  of  Motherhood.  With  her  hands 
tied  behind  her  back  a  young  mother  bends 
to  the  ground  in  agony  of  body  in  order 
that  her  baby  may  draw  nourishment  from 
her  copious  breasts.  Despite  her  torturous 
posture,  her  face  wears  an  expression  of 
patient  tenderness  and  resignation. 

Curiously  enough,  some  have  seen  in 
Binding's  master-work  nothing  more  than  a 
glorification  of  maternal  love  and  devotion. 
For  them,  the  marble  represents  Mother- 
hood Triumphant,  the  strong  love  ot  the 

9 


io       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

mother  overcoming  all  obstacles  and  bear- 
ing the  fountain  of  life  to  her  child. 

What  a  narrow  and  restricted  interpre- 
tation! That  Sinding  intended  thus  to  ex- 
alt and  glorify  motherhood  may  be  freely 
granted,  but  he  had  another,  larger  purpose. 
With  fine  insight  and  inspiration  he  has 
carved  in  marble  the  gravest  indictment  of 
modern  civilization,  the  bondage  of  the 
mother.  Woman,  mother  and  nourisher  of 
the  race  is  bound  and  hampered  in  the  per- 
formance of  her  sublime  function.  She  is 
bound  to  the  debris  of  all  the  ages  by  po- 
litical, social  and  economic  disabilities,  by 
false  conventions,  useless  duties  and  out- 
worn lies.  Centuries  of  oppression  and  de- 
nial of  freedom  to  develop  limit  and  bind 
her  and  condemn  her  to  nourish  blindly  and 
ignorantly  the  offspring  which  she  as 
blindly  and  ignorantly  bears. 

Amid  the  confusion  and  clamor  occa- 
sioned by  the  world-wide  uprising  of  woman 
demanding  equal  political  and  economic 
status  with  men,  recognition  of  this  relation 


T  HE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS 


of  political  and  economic  servitude  to  the 
limitations  and  degradation  of  motherhood 
makes  itself  felt.  Through  woman's  loud 
protest  vibrates  her  passionate  yearning  for 
liberation  from  all  that  stands  in  the  way 
of  her  fulfillment  of  her  divinest  function, 
motherhood,  with  wisdom  and  joy.  Her 
dream  is  not  limited  to  the  right  to  vote 
upon  the  same  terms  as  men,  or  even  to 
equality  with  man  in  the  labor  market. 
These  are  at  best  beginnings  —  they  are 
the  foundation  stones  upon  which  the  free- 
dom of  motherhood  is  to  be  built. 

Socialism  appeals  to  the  mother  with  pe- 
culiar force.  It  is  the  Liberator.  At  all 
times  and  in  all  places  the  Socialist  move- 
ment has  waged  war  against  every  political, 
social  and  economic  disability  of  woman  and 
proclaimed  the  gospel  of  her  emancipation. 
With  unfaltering  courage  and  constancy  it 
has  proclaimed  its  faith  that  until  woman 
is  set  free  so  that  she  can  stand  erect  and 
unbound,  free  to  achieve  her  highest  and 
noblest  aims,  tree  to  love  and  choose  ma- 


12       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

ternal  responsibilities  with  fullness  of 
knowledge  and  power,  the  race-life  can 
never  attain  its  perfect  blossoming,  the  Su- 
perman never  be  born. 

II 

Socialism  appeals  most  strongly  to  the 
mother  through  its  fundamental  demand  for 
the  equalization  of  opportunity.  Men  do 
not  see  as  vividly  as  women  do,  nor  feel  as 
keenly,  the  terrible  injustice  of  unequal  op- 
portunity in  childhood,  or  the  limitless  suf- 
fering and  wrong  arising  from  it.  A  man 
may  assent  heartily,  without  reservation,  to 
the  Socialist  demand  for  an  equal  chance  for 
every  child  born  into  the  world,  but  only 
in  rare  instances  will  he  comprehend  the 
full  significance  of  the  demand  as  readily 
as  a  woman  will,  especially  if  she  be  a 
mother.  A  mother  will  understand  that 
the  demand  for  equality  of  opportunity  as 
the  birthright  of  every  child  voices  the  most 
revolutionary  aspiration  ever  born  of  hu- 
man hopes  and  nurtured  by  human  hearts. 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  13 

The  claim  for  an  equal  chance  for  every 
child  born  into  the  world  carries  with  it  that 
most  fundamental  of  claims,  that  every  child 
has  a  right  to  he  well-born  into  the  world. 
And  that  ideal  can  never  be  realized  until 
every  mother-to-be  is  safeguarded  by  all 
the  arts  and  resources  of  our  civilization  to 
the  end  that  she  may  bring  her  baby  into  the 
world  with  joy  —  healthy  of  body,  glad  of 
heart,  serene  of  soul,  unafraid  of  the  future, 
unterrified  by  want  or  the  fear  of  it,  secure 
in  the  consciousness  that  the  child  she  bears 
is  heir  to  all  the  riches  and  advantages  of 
earth. 

It  is  sometimes  charged  that  the  demand 
for  equality  of  opportunity  is  a  modification 
of  the  revolutionary  aim  and  temper  of  true, 
uncompromising  Socialism.  Nothing  could 
be  farther  from  the  truth  !  So  long  as  the 
Socialist  movement  unequivocally  stands  for 
that  principle,  and  directs  all  its  policies 
toward  its  realization,  it  will  be  revolution- 
ary, the  incarnate  voice  of  Social  Revolu- 
tion. As  so  often  happens,  its  simple,  in- 


i4       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

flexible  justice  gives  to  the  demand  a  sweet 
reasonableness  which  induces  many  to 
assent  to  it  lightly  without  any  serious  ex- 
amination of  all  that  it  involves.  The 
witchery  of  words  lures  men  on  and  on  un- 
til they  find  themselves  far  beyond  their 
depths  in  the  great  ocean  of  thought.  Sim- 
ple as  it  may  be  to  say,  "  I  believe  in  an  equal 
chance  for  every  child  born  into  the  world," 
an  intelligent  understanding  of  all  that  the 
declaration  implies  would  limit  its  acceptance 
to  those  who  realize  the  necessity  of  a  com- 
plete reconstruction  of  society. 

Ill 

We  cannot  separate  the  demand  for 
equality  of  opportunity  as  the  child's  birth- 
right from  the  claim  that  every  woman  who 
assumes  the  peril,  pain  and  responsibility  of 
motherhood  is  entitled  to  all  the  care  and 
protection  which  the  collective  power  and 
knowledge  of  civilization  make  possible. 
With  this  as  our  standard  of  judgment,  let 
us  with  full  candor  face  the  facts  that  are 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  15 

and  then  sec  if  we  cannot  visualize  in  our 
imagination  the  facts  which  might  be.— 

Upon  the  Avenue,  in  a  home  of  refine- 
ment, beauty  and  comfort  dwells  a  woman. 
She  has  never  felt  the  bitterness  of  pov- 
erty, or  the  fear  of  it.  She  has  never  had 
to  toil  in  weariness,  fearful  lest  she  lack 
food,  raiment  or  shelter.  As  a  child  she 
was  carefully  nurtured  and  protected  from 
every  evil  influence.  She  enjoyed  her  birth- 
right of  play  and  laughter  and  song.  No 
factory's  gloom  ever  chilled  her  spirit,  no 
harsh  machines  ever  hushed  her  song  with 
their  angry  clangor.  Wisdom  and  love  ten- 
derly watched  and  nurtured  both  her  body 
and  her  mind,  so  that  she  grew  into  woman- 
hood strong  and  beautiful  of  body  and 
mind.  1  hus  we  see  her  in  her  home,  splen- 
didly equipped  for  motherhood,  as  every 
woman  ought  to  be. 

When  the  sweet  sense  of  dawning  moth- 
erhood comes  to  her  it  comes  as  a  beautiful 
dream.  She  does  not  contemplate  with 
terror  the  thought  that  the  Unborn  nestling 


i6      SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

beneath  her  heart  may  have  a  childhood  like 
unto  her  own.  She  looks  to  the  future  with 
serene  confidence.  She  lives  over  again  in 
memory  her  own  happy  childhood. 

As  the  critical  days  draw  near,  what  in- 
finite resources  she  commands  for  her  own 
peace  and  the  welfare  of  the  Unborn! 
What  care  is  expended,  what  art  employed, 
to  shield  her  from  danger,  from  weariness 
of  body  or  distress  of  mind!  And  then, 
when  the  first  low  cry  falls  upon  her  ear  like 
angel-music,  no  fear  chills  her  heart.  She 
rejoices  in  the  consciousness  that  her  child 
is  heir  to  all  the  ages,  that  all  the  treasuries 
of  art,  of  science,  of  beauty  belong  to  it. 
She  can  say  with  the  Psalmist: 

'  The  lines  are  fallen  unto  me  in  pleasant  places ; 
Yea,  I  have  a  goodly  heritage." 

By  way  of  contrast,  let  us  watch  the  un- 
folding of  another  life:  On  a  side  street, 
in  a  tenement  that  is  mean  and  poor  and 
void  of  beauty,  dwells  another  woman.  She 
dwells  in  the  same  city  as  her  fortunate  sis- 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  17 

tcr,  but  not  in  the  same  world.  The  gulf 
which  separates  the  two  is  well-nigh  as 
broad  and  impassable  as  that  which  sepa- 
rates mankind  from  the  anthropoid  apes. 
Wonderfully  unlike  in  their  lives,  they  are 
yet  wonderfully  alike  in  one  respect.  Tlicy 
are  both  mothers. 

The  tenement  mother  has  never  known 
the  bliss  of  freedom  from  poverty.  The 
fear  of  Want  has  darkened  every  stage  of 
her  life.  Its  ugly  shape  brooded  over  her 
birth  and  perched  upon  her  cradle.  It 
spoiled  her  birthright  of  play  and  laughter 
and  song.  When  she  ought  to  have  been 
playing  in  the  enchanted  gardens  of  child- 
hood, an  Invisible  Power  made  her  captive 
and  bound  her  to  the  remorseless  wheels  of 
industry.  The  same  great  Invisible  Power 
took  the  light  of  hope  from  her  eyes,  the 
bloom  of  health  from  her  cheeks,  the  song 
ot  the  joy  of  life  from  her  heart,  and  trans- 
muted them  into  gold.  Overworked,  un- 
derfed, and  forever  afraid  of  the  morrow, 
she  grew  somehow  into  a  pathetic  sort  of 


i8       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

womanhood,  weak  and  weary  of  body,  un- 
trained, tragically  ill-equipped  for  mother- 
hood. 

When  first  she  feels  the  gentle  stirrings 
of  a  new  life  the  pride  of  motherhood's  shy 
dawning  is  soon  dispelled.  The  Great 
Fear  which  haunted  her  childhood  rises  to 
mock  her  pride  and  turn  her  cup  of  joy  to 
bitterness.  She  lives  her  own  childhood 
over  again,  and  in  her  terror  sees  the  Un- 
born hunger  as  she  hungered,  weep  as  she 
wept,  toil  as  she  toiled,  faint  and  fall  be- 
neath the  heavy  burden  as  she  fainted  and 
iell.  She  sees  the  Unborn  despoiled  by  the 
Invisible  Power  as  she  has  been  despoiled. 

As  the  critical  days  draw  near  her  terror 
increases  with  the  pain  caused  by  the  rest- 
less life  of  the  Unborn.  The  pains  of  the 
body  are  as  nothing  when  compared  with 
the  anguish  caused  by  the  fearful  thought 
that  the  Unborn  must  face  a  future  like  her 
own  past — a  tragic  struggle  with  sordid 
poverty.  She  longs  for  rest  for  the  sake  of 
the  Unborn,  that  it  may  rest,  but  in  vain. 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  19 

Daughter  of  toil  and  privation,  she  must  toil 
on,  despite  her  pain.  The  arts  and  re- 
sources of  civilization  are  not  available  to 
shield  such  as  she  from  danger,  from  weari- 
ness of  body  or  distress  of  mind! 

At  last  there  comes  a  day  when  she  sinks 
by  her  unfinished  task  exhausted.  She  hears 
the  low  wail  of  her  child.  It  falls  upon  her 
frightened  ears  like  the  reproach  of  an  out- 
raged spirit.  In  the  moment  of  her  deliv- 
erance from  the  pain  of  the  body,  the  an- 
guish of  her  soul  increases.  She  sees,  as 
only  a  mother  can,  the  heritage  of  toil  and 
privation  to  which  her  child  is  born. 

IV 

The  contrast  is  not  overdrawn.  It  is 
tragic  and  terrible,  but  we  must  face  it  and 
reckon  with  it  if  we  would  understand  all 
that  is  implied  in  the  demand  that  every 
woman  who  assumes  the  functions  of  moth- 
erhood shall  have  equal  protection,  equal  ad- 
vantage, equal  opportunity,  so  far  as  the 
gift  of  these  lies  within  human  power. 


20       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

It  is  no  answer  to  our  demand  to  urge 
that  absolute  equality  of  equipment  for 
motherhood  is  a  beautiful  but  unattainable 
ideal;  that  there  are  factors  which  are  be- 
yond human  control.  Let  so  much  be 
granted:  there  still  remain  the  awful  in- 
equalities which  are  of  human  causation  and 
remediable  by  collective  action.  In  the  case 
of  the  two  mothers  of  our  illustration  all  the 
advantages  of  the  mother  of  good  fortune 
and  all  the  disadvantages  of  the  mother  of 
ill  fortune  are  of  human  origin.  The 
beautiful  home  of  the  mother  of  good  for- 
tune is  an  environmental  condition  of  hu- 
man making.  The  skill  and  care  which  pro- 
tected her  and  equipped  her  for  motherhood 
are  human  forces.  Likewise  the  squalid 
tenement  home  of  the  less  fortunate  mother 
is  an  environmental  condition  of  human 
origin.  The  poverty  which  blasted  her  life 
is  a  social  condition  of  our  human  making. 
The  labor  in  childhood  which  wrecked  her 
body  is  a  social  condition,  too,  for  which  we 
are  collectively  responsible. 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS 


There  is  no  reason  other  than  our  short- 
comings, our  social  ignorance,  indifference  or 
greed  why  any  of  these  evils  should  continue 
to  exist.  It  is  well  within  our  collective 
power  to  make  the  advantages  enjoyed  by  the 
fortunate  mother  on  the  Avenue  equally  acces- 
sible to  every  mother  in  the  civilized  world. 
There  is  no  good,  sensible  reason  why  a  sin- 
gle ugly  tenement  should  be  built  anywhere, 
or  why  those  we  have  already  suffered  to  be 
built  should  continue  to  exist  and  blight  and 
dwarf  the  bodies  and  souls  of  the  dwellers 
in  them.  It-  is  well  within  our  social  power 
to  make  all  human  habitations  conform  to  the 
splendid  ideal  of  Ibsen's  Master  Builder 
Solness : 

".  .  .  homes  for  human  beings.  Cozy, 
comfortable,  bright  homes,  till  ere  father  and 
mother  and  the  ichole  troop  of  children  can 
lii'c  in  safety  and  gladness,  feeling  what  a 
happ\  thing  it  is  to  be  alii'c  in  the  icorld  - 
and  most  of  all  to  belong  to  each  other  —  in 
great  things  and  in  small." 

There  is  no  good,  sensible  reason  why  any 


22       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

little  child  anywhere  within  the  boundaries 
of  civilization  should  be  denied  the  precious 
birthright  of  joyful  play  and  forced  to  per- 
form body  and  soul  destroying  tasks  in  fac- 
tory, workshop  or  mine,  while  strong  men 
stand  idle  in  the  market  place  and  complain, 
"  No  man  hath  hired  us." 

And  surely  there  is  no  good  reason  why 
anywhere  within  the  limits  of  civilized  so- 
ciety a  mother  must  imperil  her  own  life  and 
that  of  her  offspring  by  working  her  body  to 
weariness  during  the  period  of  her  preg- 
nancy; no  reason  why  the  health  and  happi- 
ness of  mother  and  child  should  be  menaced 
by  the  mother's  fear  of  the  hideous  monster, 
poverty.  It  has  been  shown  by  Pinard  and 
others  that  overwork  during  pregnancy  seri- 
ously affects  the  offspring  and  is  an  impor- 
tant cause  of  premature  birth  and  of  still- 
birth.1 If  we  take  a  hundred  working 
women  and  enable  them  to  rest  during  the 
last  three  months  of  pregnancy,  we  shall  find 

1  In  Boston   more  than  five  per  cent,  of  the  births  are 
still-births. 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  23 

that  their  offspring  arc  larger  and  finer  than 
those  of  a  hundred  similar  working  women 
who  have  pursued  their  regular  employment 
until  a  short  time  before  their  confinement. 
Moreover,  there  will  be  fewer  premature 
births.  It  is  not  as  generally  known  as  it 
ought  to  be  that  prematurity  of  birth  is  one 
of  the  important  causes  of  excessive  infant 
mortality.  Prematurity  means  immaturity. 
The  prematurely  born  child  comes  into  the 
world  ill-equipped  to  withstand  the  perils 
of  infancy  and  childhood.  How  important 
this  is  may  be  guessed  from  the  fact  that,  ac- 
cording to  Ilavelock  Ellis,  about  one-third 
of  the  babies  born  in  civilized  countries  to- 
day are  prematurely  born.2 

If  the  right  of  the  child  to  be  well-born 
means  anything  at  all,  if  it  is  more  than  a 
cant  phrase,  it  means  the  right  of  every 
mother  to  be  surrounded  by  all  the  care,  all 
the  skill,  all  the  safeguards  of  the  health  and 
happiness  of  herself  and  her  child,  which 

-  HAVE  LOCK  KI.LIS,    The  Problem  of  Race-Regeneration, 
p.  18. 


24      SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

human  lo\Te  and  knowledge  make  possible. 
So  much  the  intelligent  and  humane  breeder 
of  animals  provides  for  the  brood  mare. 
Even  the  poor  ignorant  Kaffir  aims  to  as- 
sure so  much  to  the  mother  of  his  children. 

x 

Elie  Reclus  tells  us  that  savages  almost  uni- 
versally exempt  their  women  from  toil  for 
long  periods  before  and  after  childbirth.3 
It  is  only  among  civilized  human  beings  that 
this  fundamental  claim  of  motherhood  re- 
ceives no  recognition! 

Socialism,  then,  demands  that  every  so- 
cial condition,  every  art  and  every  power  of 
science  which  now  contribute  to  the  health- 
fulness  and  happiness  of  motherhood  for  the 
privileged  few  shall  be  democratized  and 
made  common  to  all  mothers.  It  would 
transform  the  privilege  of  a  class  into  an 
inalienable  right  for  all.  Its  cardinal  prin- 
ciple, the  communism  of  opportunity, 
touches  the  whole  octave  of  life,  but  no- 
where is  it  of  more  vital  significance  to  the 
life  of  the  race  than  where  it  touches  the 

3  ELIE  RECLUS,  Primitive  Folk,  p.  35. 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  25 

fundamental    claims    of    motherhood    in   this 
far-reaching    and    revolutionary   proposal. 


But  it  is  not  enough  that  the  mother  shall 
be  given  an  opportunity  to  bring  her  baby 
into  the  world  with  all  the  advantages  of 
healthful  and  beautiful  preparation  and  of 
healthful  and  beautiful  surroundings  for  the 
child.  Motherhood  needs  a  larger  free- 
dom yet.  Every  mother  needs  and  should 
have  the  perfect  freedom  of  a  full  oppor- 
tunity to  be  a  mother  in  the  most  complete 
sense  of  that  much  too  narrowly  interpreted 
word — freedom  to  remain  with  her  child 
to  nourish  and  guard  its  body  and  soul  dur- 
ing all  the  dependent  years.  Nothing  less 
than  that  will  suffice. 

Motherhood  is  not  for  all  women,  per- 
haps, but  it  is  surely  woman's  highest  anil 
holiest  mission.  A  curse  rests  upon  the  so- 
cial system  which  tears  millions  of  mothers 
away  from  the  cradles  of  their  babies,  from 
their  true  vocation  as  builders  of  the  bodies 


26       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

and  souls  of  their  sons  and  daughters,  and 
forces  them  into  factories,  workshops,  stores, 
counting-houses  and  other  women's  kitchens 
to  labor  while  their  children  are  neglected. 
A  social  system  which  finds  larger  profit  in 
the  making  of  paper  bags  and  shoddy  cloth- 
ing for  the  sake  of  dividends  to  an  exploit- 
ing class  than  in  the  development  of  strong, 
well-nurtured  children,  is  doomed. 

Yet  this  wrong  is  going  on  all  the  time, 
practically  unchecked,  all  over  the  civilized 
world.  The  shockingly  heavy  mortality  of 
our  large  factory  towns,  where  many  moth- 
ers are  employed  in  factories,  leaving  their 
babies  in  the  charge  of  old  women,  or  of 
small  girls,  is  very  largely  due  to  the  em- 
ployment of  the  mothers  away  from  the 
home.4  There  is  no  food  for  a  baby  which 

4  At  the  Fifteenth  International  Congress  of  Hygiene 
and  Demography,  held  at  Washington,  D.  C.,  September, 
1912,  Dr.  (ieor.ee  Reid,  public  health  officer  of  Stafford, 
England,  gave  an  account  of  an  inquiry  which  he  had 
conducted,  on  behalf  of  the  British  government,  to  deter- 
mine, if  possible,  the  effect  of  the  labor  of  married 
women  on  infant  mortality.  According  to  The  Survey, 
October  5,  1912,  the  twelve  months'  life  history  of  5000 
infants  in  the  families  of  Staffordshire  artisans  was 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  27 

can  compare  with  its  mother's  milk.  The 
mortality  of  hand-fed  babies  is  generally 
three  times  that  of  breast-led  babies.  Some- 
times the  difference  is  even  greater  than  that. 
There  are  many  mothers  who  cannot  nurse 
their  offspring  for  physical  reasons.  They 
and  their  babies  are  to  be  pitied.  There  are 
women  who  can,  but  will  not.  They  refuse 
to  make  the  sacriiice  oi  social  enjoyment 
which  nursing  their  babies  would  involve. 
Such  women  are  to  be  condemned.  Their 
sin  comes  perilously  near  to  that  form  of 
selfishness  which  prompts  infanticide. 

But  there  are  other  mothers  whose 
breasts  arc  full,  and  who  would  gladly  nurse 
their  babies,  yet  do  not.  They  cannot. 
They  are  prevented  from  doing  so  by  that 
great  Invisible  Power  which  drives  them  into 

studied.  The  employment  of  married  women  in  the  pot- 
tery towns  of  Staffordshire  i>  common,  Says  The  Sur- 
i'ry:  ''The  infant  mortality  among  the  class  of  work- 
ing mothers  was  found  to  exceed  that  among  the  house- 
wives by  43  per  cent.  BY  a  shift  in  the  statistic;1!  clas- 
sifications it  was  found  that  the  mortality  amonc;  infants 
pr.rtly  artificially  fed  exceeded  that  of  the  naturally  fed 
class  by  79  per  cent.,  that  those  wholly  artificially  fed 
exceeded  the  breast-ted  babies  by  157  [per  cent.J." 


28       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

the  industrial  world  to  become  wage  earners. 
Of  all  the  wastes  of  which  civilized  society 
is  guilty,  the  worst  and  most  tragic  is  the 
waste  of  motheriiood.  The  talents  of  un- 
counted thousands  of  mothers  are  wasted, 
perverted  to  base  and  unworthy  ends. 
Sometimes  members  of  the  employing  class 
experience  some  qualms  of  conscience  as  a 
result  of  the  recognition  of  this  waste,  and, 
in  a  spirit  of  philanthropy,  build  nurseries  in 
connection  with  their  factories,  so  that  the 
mothers  may  suckle  their  babies  at  stated 
intervals  of  their  work.  So  keen  is  the  de- 
sire to  reduce  the  infant  death  rate,  to  stop 
some  of  the  waste  of  baby  lives,  that  many 
of  our  social  reformers  welcome  this  hideous 
compromise.  They  do  not  ask  themselves 
why  motherhood  should  thus  be  subordinated 
to  profit-making;  why  in  our  social  economy 
the  maternal  function  of  building  up  the 
body  and  soul  of  the  child  should  be  sub- 
ordinated to  the  production  of  commodities. 
In  The  blaster  Builder,  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  of  his  dramas,  and  the  most  beauti- 


THE   ANGEL'S    GIFTS  29 

ful,  Ibsen  describes  with  vivid  power  the 
true  vocation  of  the  mother,  to  be  a  builder 
of  the  bodies  and  souls  of  little  children. 
Halvard  Solness,  the  Master  Builder,  tells 
little  Hilda  Wangel,  that  elfin-like  creature 
whose  radicalism  challenges  him,  the  story 
of  the  great  tragedy  which  wrecked  his 
wife's  life  and  made  her  the  wraith-like 
creature  that  she  is.  He  tells  her  that  his 
wife's  vocation  has  been  crushed  and  stunted, 
in  order  that  his  own  success  might  be 
achieved.  lie  tells  his  bewildered  com- 
panion that  Aline,  his  wife,  had  a  talent  for 
building. 

"Not   houses    and   towers,    a-nd   spires  - 
not  such  things  as  I  work  away  at,"  he  ex- 
plains,   and    Hilda    asks,    "Well,    but    what 
then?''      He    replies   with   bitter   agony: 

"  For  building  up  the  souls  of  little  chil- 
dren, Hilda.  For  building  up  children's 
souls  in  perfect  balance,  and  in  noble  and 
beautiful  forms.  For  enabling  tJiem  to  soar- 
up  into  erect  and  full-grown  Jiuman  souls. 
That  nas  .-1  line's  talent.  And  there  it  all 


30       SOCIALISM    AND    M  O  T  II  E  R  H  O  O  D 

lies  now  —  unused  and  unusable  forever  — 
of  no  earthly  service  to  anyone  —  just  like 
the  ruins  left  by  a  fire." 

In  all  our  industrial  towns  there  are  nu- 
merous women  like  Aline  Solness.  Their 
name  is  legion.  Dowered  by  nature  with 
the  wonderful  talent  of  motherhood,  for 
"  building  up  children's  souls  in  perfect  bal- 
ance, and  in  noble  and  beautiful  forms,"  they 
are  compelled  to  give  their  lives  to  other, 
less  noble,  work.  Their  talents  lie  "  unused 
and  unusable  forever  —  of  no  earthly  serv- 
ice to  anyone --just  like  the  ruins  left  by  a 
fire." 

Nothing  in  the  world  can  take  the  place 
of  maternal  affection  and  attention.  From 
time  to  time  amiable  theorists  —  generally 
childless! — 'have  propounded  plans  for  sup- 
planting the  individual  mother  in  the  rearing 
of  children.  All  sorts  of  communal  nurs- 
eries with  "  scientific  direction  and  manage- 
ment "  have  been  advocated.  If  there  is  any 
one  thing  about  which  we  may  speak  with 
assurance  it  is  the  folly  of  the  basic  idea  of 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  31 

these  schemes.  All  observed  facts  go  to 
show  that  it  is  a  calamity  for  a  child  to  be 
deprived  of  the  attention  of  its  mother.  The 
most  elaborate  communal  or  cooperative 
nursery  ever  devised,  despite  the  most  sci- 
entific direction  and  management,  cannot 
equal  in  efficiency  the  care  of  a  healthy 
mother  of  average  intelligence.  For  or- 

o  *— > 

phans  and  foundlings  such  institutions  may, 
in  some  cases,  be  necessary,  but  they  are  nec- 
essary evils.  Experience  plainly  teaches 
that  it  is  far  better  to  place  the  little  ones  in 
real  homes,  no  matter  how  humble  the  homes 
may  be.  Every  little  human  child  needs  and 
should  have  "  a  pair  of  mother's  arms  all  its 
own." 

Even  the  practice,  formerly  much  more 
common  than  now,  of  handing  infants  over 
to  wet-nurses  to  be  suckled,  should  never  be 
resorted  to  if  the  mother  can  nurse  the  child 
herself.  Such  nursing  is  better  than  bottle 
feeding,  but  the  mortality  oi  iniants  suckled 
by  others  than  their  own  mothers  is  double 
that  of  babies  nursed,  as  nature  intended 


32       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

them  to  be,  by  their  own  mothers.  Plato, 
in  his  immortal  Utopia,  provided  that  no 
mother  should  be  able  to  nurse,  or  to  iden- 
tify, her  own  child.  We  know  now  that 
Plato,  profound  thinker  though  he  was, 
made  the  fundamental  error  of  regarding 
maternity  as  a  purely  animal  function,  and  of 
disregarding  the  subtle  psychic  factors  which 
enter  into  it. 

The  whole  authority  of  modern  science 
supports  the  demand  of  the  Socialist  for  such 
a  change  in  our  industrial  system  as  will  free 
motherhood  and  make  it  possible  for  every 
mother  to  devote  herself  to  the  care  of  her 
children.  The  world  does  not  need  —  it 
will  be  infinitely  better  without  —  the  great 
universal  waste  of  the  talents  of  mother- 
hood. 

VI 

It  is  just  a  hundred  years  ago  since  Rob- 
ert Owen,  in  the  first  of  his  Essays  on  the 
Formation  of  Human  Character,  wrote: 
"  Any  general  character,  from  the  best  to 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  33 

the  worst,  irom  the  most  ignorant  to  die 
most  enlightened,  may  be  given  to  any  com- 
munity, even  to  the  world  at  large,  by  the 
application  of  proper  means;  which  means 
are  to  a  great  extent  at  the  command  and 
under  the  control  of  those  who  have  influ- 
ence in  the  affairs  of  men."  Owen's  experi- 
ence at  New  Lanark  had  convinced  him  that 
human  character  depended  upon  heredity  to 
a  very  much  smaller  degree,  and  upon  en- 
vironment to  a  very  much  larger  degree, 
than  was  generally  believed.  lie  was  not 
slow  to  perceive  that  here  was  a  fact  of  tre- 
mendous significance  to  the  worker  for  so- 
cial reformation.  So  long  as  men  believed 
that  the  physical  and  moral  decay  by  which 
they  were  confronted  had  its  roots  in  the 
past,  that  children  were  literally  "  damned 
before  they  were  born,"  they  could  not  un- 
dertake the  task  of  social  redemption  with 
the  faith  and  confidence  essential  to  success. 
Owen's  success  was  due  to  his  profound  be- 
lief that  environment  was  far  more  im- 


34       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

portant  than  heredity,  and  he  bravely  did 
his  part  to  dispel  the  fear  of  heredity  which 
paralyzed  the  hearts  and  hopes  of  men. 

We  know  to-dny  that  Owen  was  right. 
The  overwhelming  bulk  of  scientific  evidence 
supports  his  conclusion.  It  was  the  belief 
of  the  late  Dr.  Barnardo,  the  famous  Eng- 
lish philanthropist,  that  heredity  is  a  practi- 
cally negligible  factor  in  the  general  problem 
of  poverty,  vice,  crime  and  racial  degen- 
eration. He  gathered  the  human  drift- 
wood of  the  great  English  metropolis,  the 
foundlings  picked  up  in  the  gutters  and  ash- 
cans,  the  orphans  of  the  criminal  and  vicious 
and  shiftless  denizens  of  the  slums,  the  waifs 
and  strays  who  found  their  way  into  the 
clutches  of  the  police.  From  such  unprom- 
ising material,  he  reared  men  of  good  health 
and  character,  from  wrhose  ranks  Canada, 
South  Africa  and  Australia  have  recruited 
thousands  of  their  finest  citizens. 

At  the  First  International  Congress  on 
Eugenics,  held  in  London  in  the  summer  of 
1912,  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Balfour,  the  former 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS 


Prime  Minister  of  England,  pointed  out  that 
there  is  far  less  dogmatism,  and  far  more 
divergence  of  opinion,  upon  the  subject  of 
heredity  to-day  than  in  the  seventies  and 
eighties  of  the  last  century.  That  is  true, 
at  least  to  the  extent  that  it  is  now  generally 
admitted  that  environment  is  the  more  im- 
portant factor.  Sir  John  MacDonald,  per- 
haps the  leading  English  authority  on  the 
subject,  stoutly  maintained  that,  in  the  ma- 
jority of  cases,  the  habitual  criminal  is  made 
so  by  his  environment  and  training,  that 
heredity  is  a  far  less  important  factor. 
Morals  depend  upon  physical  health  and 
good  environment  far  more  than  upon  her- 
itage. Professor  S.  G.  Smith,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota,  epigrammatically 
summed  up  the  case  in  his  declaration  that 
he  would  "  rather  be  the  son  of  a  healthy 
burglar  than  of  a  consumptive  bishop."  He 
took  the  view  of  Dr.  Eichholz,  expressed  in 
his  testimony  before  the  famous  British  In- 
terdepartmental Committee  on  Physical  De- 
terioration, that  there  "  is  a  lack  of  any  real 


36       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

evidence  of  any  hereditary  taint  or  strain  of 
deterioration  even  among  the  poor  popula- 
tions of  our  cities  .  .  .  our  physical  degen- 
eracy is  produced  afresh  by  each  generation 
.  .  .  there  is  every  chance  under  reasonable 
measures  of  amelioration  of  restoring  our 
poorest  population  to  a  condition  of  normal 
physique.  .  .  .  The  interpretation  would 
seem  to  be  that  Nature  gives  every  genera- 
tion a  fresh  start." 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Socialist 
seeking  to  remove  poverty,  vice  and  crime, 
and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  mothers 
of  the  race,  this  is  the  most  inspiring  and 
encouraging  message  science  has  ever  given 
to  the  world.  It  means  that  the  wrongs  of 
our  ancestors  affect  us  much  less  than  an 
older  generation  of  scientists  taught  us  to  be- 
lieve. It  means  that  if  we  can  surround  the 
children  from  the  moment  of  birth  with  de- 
cent conditions,  maintain  them  in  a  proper 
environment,  solve  the  problem  of  the  distri- 
bution of  wealth  and  do  away  with  poverty, 
we  can  move  upward,  and  onward  practically 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  37 

unhampered  by  the  sins  of  past  generations, 
unaff righted  by  the  terrible  specter  of  physi- 
cal heredity  damning  our  babies  while  yet 
they  lie  in  the  wombs  of  their  mothers. 

\Ve  Socialists  do  not  deny  an  important 
influence  to  heredity.  Still  less  do  we  deny 
the  importance  of  many  of  the  things  our 
inends,  the  Eugenists,  are  so  vigorously  con- 
tending lor.  That  certain  hereditarily 
transmissible  diseases  and  weaknesses  ought 
to  bar  marriage  and  procreation  is  in  nowise 
incompatible  with  our  faith.  As  Dr.  Sa- 
Iceby  reminds  us,  recent  study  has  clearly 
shown  the  importance  of  heredity  in  the 
realm  of  idiocy  and  insanity,  but  it  has 
shown  also,  with  equal  clearness,  that  c-i'cn 
in  cretinic  idiocv,  the  addition  of  "  one  single 
ingredient  to  the  diet  may  concert  the  poor 
idiot  into  a  -person  of  fair  and  normal 
mind."  :>  Tt  is  only  when  eugenics  is  offered 
as  an  all-sufficient  solution  of  the  social  prob- 
lem that  we  Socialists  need  have  any  conflict 
with  the  Eugenists. 

0  C.  W.  SALFF.BY,  Methods  of  Race-Regeneration,  p.  12. 


38       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

So  long  as  it  was  believed  that  tuberculosis 
was  perpetuated  mainly,  if  not  wholly, 
through  the  channels  of  heredity,  that  "  it 
ran  in  families,"  and  was  "  born  in  the 
blood  "  of  its  victims,  so  long  we  were  help- 
less to  effectually  combat  it.  We  only  be- 
gan to  effectually  fight  the  disease  when  we 
set  ourselves  free  from  the  tear  of  heredity.6 
And  so  it  is  with  the  great  problem  of  race 
degeneration,  including  in  that  term  poverty, 
vice  and  crime.  We  can  only  address  our- 
selves hopefully  and  confidently  to  the  task 
of  regenerating  the  race  when,  no  longer  op- 
pressed and  dominated  by  the  fear  of  hered- 
ity, which  is  beyond  human  control,  so  far 
as  all  the  countless  generations  of  the  past 
are  concerned,  we  turn  our  attention  to  the 
living  present,  to  the  great  facts  of  environ- 
ment, which  are  within  our  control. 

r'  In  a  paper  read  at  the  Academy  of  Medicine,  New 
York  City,  on  January  igth,  1914,  it  was  declared  by  the 
eminent  medical  authority,  Lieut. -Colonel  Woodruff,  late 
of  the  U.  S.  A.  medical  corps,  that  it  is  the  consensus  of  ex- 
pert opinion  that  no  child  is  ever  born  with  tuberculosis. 


Til  E    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  39 


VII 

The  hope  of  the  race,  then,  lies  in  the 
equalization  of  opportunity  which  is  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  Socialism.  And 
to  the  mothers  of  the  race  that  ideal  must 
make  its  strongest  appeal.  Socialism  is 
a  living  protest  against  the  waste  of  human 
life  represented  by  the  appalling  volume  of 
needless  infant  mortality.  Our  gravest 
peril  is  not  "  race  suicide,"  but  race  homi- 
cide. The  heart  of  our  problem  is  not  a 
low  birthrate,  but  a  needlessly  high  death- 
rate.  More  than  thirty  per  cent,  of  our 
babies  die  without  reaching  the  age  of  two 
years.  One-fourth  of  all  the  babies  born 
to  the  mothers  of  America  die  without  reach- 
ing the  age  of  one  year.  Each  year,  in  the 
United  States,  we  needlessly  sacrifice  fully 
i  ^0,000  baby  lives.  These  are  victims  of 
poverty,  of  neglect,  of  ignorance  —  in  a 
word,  of  the  frightful  inequality  of  oppor- 
tunity which  characterizes  our  social  order. 

Socialists  are  olten  accused  of  hugging  to 


4o       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

themselves  the  delusion  of  a  world  in  which 
all  men  and  women  will  he  equal.  Their 
enemies  taunt  them  with  aiming  to  bring 
about  "  the  dull  level  of  equality."  In  point 
of  fact,  only  through  the  equalization  of  op- 
portunity can  we  ever  realize  anything  ap- 
proaching true  individualism.  The  Social- 
ist ideal  is  not  at  all  incompatible  with  the 
development  of  individual  genius  and  char- 
acter. On  the  contrary,  until  we  socialize 
all  the  opportunities  for  healthful  living,  so 
that  they  are  the  common  heritage  of  all,  we 
shall  waste  an  incalculable  amount  of  poten- 
tial individual  genius. 

There  must  be  inequality  of  capacity,  of 
character,  of  achievement.  That  is  Na- 
ture's universal  and  immutable  law.  But  if 
we  are  to  obtain  the  best  results  from  that 
inequality  of  capacity,  character  and  achieve- 
ment, we  must  give  to  every  child  born  full 
and  free  access  to  every  social  gift,  so  that 
he  may  develop  all  his  gifts.  The  inevitable 
result  of  this  communism  of  opportunity 
must  be  a  glorious  individualism  of  achieve- 


TII  i:  AN  c;  EL'S  c;  i  FTS  4i 

nicnt.  Socialism,  then,  is  not  aiming  at 
equality  and  a  level  plain  of  mediocrity,  but 
rather  at  a  glorious  inequality  through  the 
equality  of  advantage  which  it  seeks  to  es- 
tablish. 

That  there  is  a  much  greater  degree  of 
equality  in  human  capacity  and  talent  than 
we  have  hereto! ore  recognized  is  certain. 
As  we  have  seen,  within  the  species,  environ- 
ment counts  tor  more  than  heredity.  A 
great  deal  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  su- 
periority which  exists  among  men  is  due  to 
exceptional  advantages,  rather  than  to  an 
inherited  superiority.  To  admit  so  much  is 
not  to  claim  that  with  the  destruction  of  the 
harriers  which  now  deny  to  the  many  the 
advantages  enjoyed  by  the  few  there  would 
no  longer  be  differences  among  men.  Equal- 
ity could  only  be  attained  by  holding  down 
the  stronger  to  the  level  of  the  weaker, 
r.quality  of  opportunity,  on  the  other  hami. 
would  simply  unbind  those  who  are  now 
bound  down  by  lack  of  opportunity  and  set 
them  free. 


42       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

Poverty  must  be  abolished,  because  it  is 
anti-social,  and  denies  millions  of  souls  an 
adequate  opportunity  to  develop  their  in- 
born powers.  The  disease-breeding  tene- 
ment and  the  slum  must  go  for  the  same  rea- 
son. Child  labor  must  go,  because  it  stunts 
the  body  and  the  mind,  destroying  the  physi- 
cal, intellectual  and  spiritual  forces  which 
are  essential  to  the  highest  and  noblest  de- 
velopment of  a  human  being.  When  we 
turn  back  to  the  Athens  of  Pericles,  where 
individualism  flourished  and  produced  the 
noblest  art  the  world  has  ever  known,  we  are 
struck  at  once  by  the  fact  that  there  was  in 
Athens  then,  for  the  free  citizens,  a  splendid 
communism  of  opportunity.  Athens  found 
that  the  highest  individualism  was  the  nat- 
ural fruitage  of  her  fundamental  communism 
which  placed  the  means  of  the  common  life 
under  the  control  of  the  whole  body  politic. 
In  like  manner,  we  Socialists  believe,  the 
most  generous  individualism  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  culture  will  result  from  the  so- 
cialization of  production  and  exchange  and 


THE   ANGEL'S    GIFTS  43 

the  social  advantages  based  upon  production 
and  exchange. 

VIII 

To-day  the  production  and  the  exchange 
of  wealth  are  functions  carried  on  with 
an  anti-social  object,  namely,  the  profit  of  a 
class  of  non-producers.  That  is  the  funda- 
mental wrong  of  capitalism.  That  is  the 
source  of  its  poverty,  its  vice,  its  crime,  its 
inefficient  lives,  its  inequality  of  opportunity. 
Those  who  make  the  bread  of  the  world 
cannot  eat  the  bread  their  hands  have  made. 
No  one  is  poor  because  there  is  not  enough 
for  all.  No  child  in  America  suffers  hunger 
because  there  is  a  dearth  of  food  in  America. 
No  child  wears  rags  or  goes  without  shoes 
because  good  clothes  and  shoes  cannot  be 
made  in  sufficient  quantity  to  supply  all. 

No!  When  the  hunger-cry  is  loudest  the 
storehouses  groan  with  their  burden  of  food. 
When  there  is  the  greatest  lack  of  clothing 
and  shoes,  warehouses  are  filled  to  overflow- 
ing with  them.  And  even  if  it  wrere  other- 
wise, there  is  always  a  well-nigh  inexhaustible 


44       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

reserve  of  productive  capacity  available  to 
supply  every  human  need.  Machinery  and 
labor  and  raw  materials  are  plentiful.  On 
the  one  side  we  have  abundant  natural  re- 
sources and  wonderful  powers  of  production; 
on  the  other  side  we  have  a  great  unsatisfied 
need  which  could  be  easily  satisfied  by  the  ap- 
plication of  a  moiety  of  our  powers  to  an 
infinitesimal  portion  of  our  resources.  But 
we  have  not  as  yet  learned  to  direct  our  pro- 
ductive capacity  to  the  social  good. 

If  our  economic  activities  were  inspired 
and  controlled  by  a  social  purpose  and  vision, 
no  human  want  would  remain  unsatisfied  so 
long  as  there  were  unexhausted  productive 
powers  and  opportunities.  All  our  re- 
sources and  our  skill  and  might  would  be 
combined  to  meet  the  needs  of  every  human 
being.  If  we  found  ourselves  incapable  of 
producing  plenty  for  all,  we  should,  if  we 
were  trulv  social,  see  to  it  that  all  shared  in 
the  dearth  due  to  the  lack  of  productive 
capacity.  On  the  other  hand,  finding  our- 
selves capable  of  producing  infinitely  more 


THE   AN  GEL'S    GIFTS  45 

than  \vc  need,  we  should,  if  we  were  truly 
social,  see  to  it  that  all  shared  the  advantages 
oi  our  triumph  as  producers.  We  should 
aim  to  make  life  better,  richer,  happier  and 
more  beautiful  for  all.  \Ve  should  see  that 
the  result  of  our  triumph  was  more  beauty 
in  the  homes  of  all  and  larger  leisure  for  all 
to  enjoy  the  beauty.  Inspired  and  controlled 
by  the  ideal  of  social  well-being,  we  should 
see  that  no  human  being  performed  in  pain  a 
task  which  might  have  been  performed  in 
joy;  that  nothing  ugly  was  produced  which 
might  have  been  made  beautiful;  that  noth- 
ing was  made  which  was  unworthy  of  our 
best  power;  that  our  work  was  the  worthiest, 
and  performed  under  the  worthiest  condi- 
tions, of  which  we  were  capable. 

So  long  as  the  prevailing  capitalist  system 
lasts  this  social  ideal  will  remain  unattaina- 
ble. For  capitalism  is  essentially  anti- 
social. Its  entire  structure  rests  upon  the 
production  of  thing,;  primarily  for  sale  to  the 
end  that  a  ruling  class  may  profit,  instead  oi 
\ipon  the  social  principle  of  production  for 


46       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

use,   for  social  gain,   for  the  common  good 
and  joy  of  all. 

There  is  no  other  adequate  explanation  of 
our  social  shortcomings.  The  only  reason 
why  men  who  are  capable  of  building  beauti- 
ful homes  —  as  is  shown  by  the  palaces  they 
build  for  the  rich  —  build  ugly,  prison-like, 
gloomy  tenements  for  themselves  and  their 
wives  and  children  to  dwell  in  is  the  fact  that 
their  labor  is  governed,  not  by  the  desire  to 
attain  supreme  usefulness,  but  by  the  desire 
for  profit.  The  only  reason  that  a  man's 
burdens  are  fastened  upon  a  child's  frail  back 
is  profit.  The  only  reason  for  the  adultera- 
tion of  the  milk  of  the  helpless  child  and 
the  bread  of  the  father  is  profit.  And  it  is 
that  same  anti-social  thing,  profit,  which  ex- 
plains the  wanton  destruction  of  the  food  for 
which  men,  women  and  children  pine,  and 
for  lack  of  which  they  starve  and  die.  In 
1911,  amid  a  nation-wide  outcry  against  the 
prevailing  famine  prices  and  the  increasing 
difficulty  of  making  ends  meet  experienced 
by  millions  of  people,  the  newspapers  told 


THE   A  NOEL'S    GIFTS  47 

the  story  of  cold  storage  warehouses  being 
opened  up  and  iood  wantonly  destroyed,  of 
a  million  dozen  eggs  destroyed  in  New  York 
alone,  in  order  that  the  supply  might  be  les- 
sened and  the  high  price  of  eggs  arbitrarily 
maintained.7  Only  in  a  society  which  pro- 
duces primarily  for  profit  and  class  advantage 
could  such  a  condition  ever  exist. 

To  whom  can  the  abolition  of  these  and 
the  manifold  other  evils  of  capitalism  be  of 
greater  interest  than  to  the  mothers?  Who 
better  than  they  can  know  the  bitter  cost  of 
production  for  profit?  Who  is  better  able 
than  the  mother  to  translate  the  tale  of  capi- 
talist profit  into  the  terms  of  social  loss  — 
of  poverty,  of  suffering,  of  dwarfed  bodies 
and  souls,  of  wrecked  hopes  and  lives? 
Who  can  have  a  greater  interest  than  the 
mother  in  the  promise  which  Socialism  brings 
of  a  world  redeemed  from  the  curse  which 
production  for  profit  has  laid  upon  our  civ- 
ilization? 

7  l'idc   daily   newspapers,   October   28,    1912. 


SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 


Production  for  use  instead  of  profit, 
for  the  common  good  instead  of  for  the 
gain  of  a  few  at  the  cost  of  the  many,  can 
only  be  made  possible  through  the  col- 
lective ownership  of  the  resources  of  na- 
ture and  the  principal  means  of  production. 
And  so  everywhere  the  Socialist  movement 
is  striving  to  bring  about  the  collective  own- 
ership and  democratic  control  and  manage- 
ment of  all  those  means  of  production  which 
so  long  as  they  are  owned  and  controlled  by 
individuals,  or  by  groups  of  individuals,  en- 
able their  owners  to  build  thrones  of  pride 
and  power  upon  the  degradation  of  the  many, 
the  users  of  the  tools,  the  actual  producers. 
Collective  ownership  of  the  means  ol  pro- 
duction, with  democratic  management,  is  the 
central  demand  in  the  Socialist  programme 
everywhere. 

This  programme  does  not  contemplate  the 
destruction  of  all  forms  of  private  property, 
and  the  making  of  all  things  common  to  all. 


T  II  E    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  49 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  quite  certain  that  col- 
lective ownership  of  the  great  social 
agencies  of  production  and  exchange  would 
result  in  making  private  property  far  more 
general  than  it  is  now.  Millions  of  people 
have  practically  no  private  property  at  all 
to-day.  They  do  not  own  the  homes  in 
which  they  live.  They  do  not  own  the  things 
they  produce.  They  do  not  own  enough  to 
provide  the  necessities  of  a  decent  existence 
during  a  month  of  enforced  abstention  from 
labor.  When  sickness,  accident,  or  other 
misfortune,  compels  them  to  be  idle  for  a 
few  weeks  they  are  reduced  to  dependence 
upon  charity  as  the  only  alternative  to  starva- 
tion. Even  in  the  most  prosperous  times 
millions  of  people  are  so  divorced  from  prop- 
erty of  all  kinds  that  they  never  have  enough 
good  lood  to  eat,  enough  good  clothes  to 
wear,  or  decent  homes  in  which  to  live. 
How  idle,  therefore,  it  is  to  urge  as  a  rea- 
son for  opposing  Socialism  and  remaining 
content  with  the  existing  order  the  fear  that 
Socialism  would  do  away  with  private  prop- 


50      SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

erty !  Capitalism  has  never  provided  all 
people  with  private  property.  Socialism  on 
the  other  hand,  would  make  it  possible  for 
every  human  being  to  have  and  own  all  the 
private  property  which  that  human  being 
could  use  to  advantage  and  without  imposing 
any  disadvantage  upon  another  human 
being. 

The  collective  ownership  of  the  principal 
means  of  social  production  —  that  is,  the 
natural  resources,  the  mines,  factories,  rail- 
ways, machinery,  and  so  on  —  would  not 
take  away  anything  from  the  great  majority 
of  people.  True,  the  worker  would  not 
himself  own  the  machine  used  by  him,  but 
that  is  his  condition  to-day.  The  workers 
in  our  great  factories  and  workshops  do  riot 
own  the  tools  with  which  they  labor.  They 
do  not  own  the  raw  materials  upon  which 
they  labor.  They  do  not  own  the  places  in 
which  they  labor.  They  do  not  own  the 
things  which  they  produce  by  their  labor. 
All  these  are  owned  by  an  exploiting  class  of 
non-producers,  whose  interest  it  is  to  see  that 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  51 

the  producers  get  in  the  form  of  wages  as 
little  as  they  can  manage  to  live  upon,  and 
produce  as  much  more  than  they  receive  as 
possible.  This  is  the  inevitable  interest  of 
the  owning  class,  because  its  own  income  is 
derived  from  that  which  the  workers  pro- 
duce over  and  above  what  they  receive  In  the 
form  of  wages. 

Collective  ownership  and  democratic  con- 
trol of  the  means  of  production  would  not 
give  the  ownership  of  the  tools  of  labor  to 
the  individual  worker.  That  was  once  pos- 
sible, in  the  days  when  production  was  of 
necessity  carried  on  by  hand  labor.  It  is 
not  possible  with  machine  production,  which 
is  only  carried  on  by  the  organized  labor 
of  masses  of  workers.  But  collective  owner- 
ship would  make  it  impossible  for  the  idle  few 
to  exploit  the  industrious  many.  It  would 
make  it  possible  for  the  workers  themselves 
to  exercise  an  effective  control  over  the  prod- 
ucts of  their  labor  and  their  distribution. 
It  would  make  certain  a  fuller  enjoyment  by 
the  producers  of  the  wealth  they  produce. 


52        S  O  C  I  A  L  I  S  M    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

This  is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  col- 
lective ownership  of  the  forces  of  social 
production  would  result  in  a  greater  dif- 
fusion of  real  private  property. 

It  is  not  difficult  for  the  mother  to  under- 
stand how  common  ownership  of  the  means 
of  production  can  be  combined  with  private 
ownership  in  consumption  goods  in  social 
economy.  Every  mother  can  see  that  the 
principle  is  the  same  as  that  which  governs 
the  home.  The  ideal  home  is,  indeed,  only 
a  microcosm  of  the  ideal  state.  In  the  well- 
regulated  home  there  is  equal  care  for  the 
collective  interest  of  the  family  as  a  whole 
and  for  the  individual  interest  of  each  mem- 
ber. The  comfort  and  advantage  of  each 
individual  member  of  the  family  depends 
upon  the  denial  of  the  power  to  monopolize 
many  things  in  the  home,  and  maintaining 
them  as  the  common  property  of  all  the 
members.  Xo  one  member  could  assert  and 
exercise  a  right  to  the  sole  ownership  and 
control  of  these  things  without  injuring  every 
other  member  of  the  family.  On  the  other 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  53 

hand,  there  are  many  things  which  must  be  re- 
garded as  belonging  to  individual  members, 
if  harmony  is  to  prevail. 

Kvery  mother  sees  this  and  comprehends 
the  philosophy  of  distribution  upon  which 
it  is  based.  If  there  arc  things  essential  to 
the  welfare  and  happiness  of  all  the  members 
of  the  family,  the  control  of  which  by  a 
single  member  would  give  that  member  a 
power  to  rule  all  the  rest,  and  to  deny  them 
corniort  and  happiness  except  upon  irksome 
and  humiliating  conditions,  the  safety  of  the 
family  is  only  assured  by  making  those  things 
common  to  all.  But  things  which  the  indi- 
vidual needs  to  own  and  control  lor  the  at- 
tainment of  personal  happiness  and  well-be- 
ing, the  ownership  and  exclusive  use  of  which 
does  not  subject  other  members  of  the  family 
to  discomfort,  properly  belong  to  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  happiness  of  the  family  de- 
pends upon  the  ability  of  each  individual  in 
it  to  secure  all  such  things  necessary  to  the 
satisfaction  of  his  or  her  wants. 

Socialism,   then,    is   an   attempt  to    realize 


54       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

in  the  larger  life  of  the  community  that  ra- 
tional and  fair  adjustment  of  collective  and 
individual  power  and  responsibility  which  is 
exemplified  by  the  family  at  its  best.  And 
to  the  mother-genius  with  its  full  understand- 
ing of  family  life  Socialism  may  well  bear 
its  programme,  confident  of  a  sympathetic 
understanding. 

x 

Many  a  thoughtful  mother  sees  in 
the  Socialist  ideal  a  beautiful  inspira- 
tion and  yet  remains  aloof  from  the  Social- 
ist movement  because  the  goal  seems  so  far 
off  and  unattainable.  She  measures  the  task 
by  the  narrow  span  of  her  own  lifetime  and 
is  overwhelmed.  On  every  hand  she  sees 
poverty  and  suffering.  The  need  is  im- 
mediate, and  Socialism  seems  so  far  remote. 
She  wants  to  feel  that  her  life  and  her  work 
benefit  those  who  are  suffering  now,  not  the 
unborn  generations  alone.  The  social  re- 
form which  promises  immediate  improve- 
ment, however  small,  makes  a  strong  claim 
for  her  support,  weaning  her  from  service  in 


THE   ANGEL'S    GIFTS  55 

the  struggle  to  bring  about  the  great  com- 
prehensive change  which  must  take  such  a 
long  time  for  its  consummation.  She  wants 
to  feel  here  and  now  that  by  her  labors  life 
is  made  happier  for  the  children  of  mis- 
fortune. 

Such  a  mother  needs  the  assurance  which 
comes  from  a  full  knowledge  of  the  Social- 
ist movement,  and  the  important  work  it  has 
accomplished  in  the  sphere  of  practical  social 
reform.  Xo  greater  mistake  could  possibly 
be  made  than  to  regard  the  Socialist  as  one 
whose  passionate  yearning  for  the  millennium 
of  his  dreams  causes  him  to  refuse  to  deal 
with  present  problems  and  to  disdain  such 
measures  of  relief  as  lie  close  at  hand.  Yet 
that  is  a  widely  prevailing  conception. 

It  is  not  the  least  of  the  glories  of  the 
Socialist  movement,  and  certainly  not  the 
least  of  its  claims  upon  the  thoughtful 
mother,  that  it  is  the  most  powerful  force 
at  work  in  the  world  for  the  amelioration 
of  present  evils  and  for  present  social  bet- 
terment. This  is  the  natural  result  of  its 


56       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

class  character  and  origin:  born  of  the  suf- 
fering and  striving  of  the  disinherited  and 
downtrodden,  voicing  their  sorrows  and  their 
visions,  it  could  not  remain  indifferent  to  the 
possibilities  of  relief  and  betterment  during 
the  long  struggle  toward  its  goal.  Socialism 
has  caused  those  who  most  feared  it  to  work 
for  social  reforms  in  the  vain  hope  that  these 
might  appease  the  people  and  wean  them 
from  Socialism.  "  Social  revolutions  are 
averted  by  judicious  social  reforms,"  said 
Turgot.  It  was  in  that  spirit  that  Bismarck 
inaugurated  the  social  reform  policies  of 
Germany.  They  have  signally  failed  to  ac- 
complish Bismarck's  subtle  purpose,  but  have 
had  the  opposite  effect  of  helping  Socialism 
by  improving  the  equipment  of  the  people 
for  the  great  struggle.  Similar  results  have 
attended  the  efforts  of  all  those  who,  in 
various  countries,  have  followed  Bismarck's 
example.  Politicians  may  attempt  to  lessen 
the  number  of  Socialist  ballots  by  granting 
social  reforms,  but  as  surely  as  these  reforms 
increase  the  physical,  mental  and  moral 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  57 

stamina  of  the  workers,  making  them 
stronger  and  wiser,  they  will  devote  their 
newly  acquired  powers  to  the  struggle  against 
capitalism. 

But  it  is  not  alone  by  frightening  conces- 
sions from  the  master  class  that  the  Socialist 
movement  promotes  social  reform.  In  every 
country  in  which  the  Socialist  movement  has 
taken  root  it  has  been  the  pioneer  of  all  ef- 
fective social  reform.  F.ven  if  we  go  back 
to  the  famous  Communist  ^Manifesto  of 
Marx  and  Engels,  we  shall  find  the  need 
and  value  of  social  reform  recognized.  In- 
deed, many  a  present  day  reform  programme 
reads  almost  as  if  it  were  taken  from  the 
second  section  of  that  Socialist  classic. 

Xo  mother  can  be  indifferent  to  the  splen- 
did record  of  the  Socialists  as  fighters  for  re- 
forms dealing  with  the  weliare  of  children. 
There  is  hardly  a  single  measure  in  the 
programme  which  the  most  thoughtful  and 
progressive  social  reformers  of  today  are 
advocating  which  has  not  long  been  zeal- 
ouslv  advocated  by  Socialists.  In  most 


58       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

cases,  the  Socialists  were  the  first  to  see  the 
necessity  of  the  reforms  and  to  advocate 
them. 

Wherever  Socialists  have  been  elected  to 
parliamentary  bodies,  or  to  administrative  of- 
fices, they  have  fought  for  the  protection  of 
motherhood.  Many  years  before  the  Inter- 
national Congress  of  Hygiene,  in  1900, 
passed  a  resolution  declaring  that  "  every 
working  woman  is  entitled  to  rest  during  the 
last  three  months  of  her  pregnancy,"  and 
urging  that  legislation  be  enacted  to  that  ef- 
fect, the  Socialists  in  many  countries  had 
vigorously  urged  that  reform.  Moreover, 
they  had  faced  the  need  of  providing  for  the 
mother  during  her  enforced  idleness  and  ad- 
vocated the  payment  of  "  maternity  sub- 
sidies "  by  the  state  or  the  municipality  to 
atone  for  the  loss  of  wages.  It  is  now  very 
generally  admitted  that  some  such  provision 
must  be  made  before  the  demand  of  the 
International  Congress  of  Hygiene  can  be 
effectively  met.  The  Socialists  have  gone 
even  further  and  urged  that  society  must,  in 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  59 

its  own  interest,  put  an  end  to  the  employ- 
ment of  mothers  during  the  infancy  of  their 
children.  They  have  pointed  to  the  fright- 
ful mortality  of  infants  whose  mothers  are 
compelled  to  work  away  from  their  homes, 
and  to  the  ill  effects  of  inadequate  and  im- 
proper care  among  the  children  who  survive. 
They  have  urged  that  society  ought  to  make 
it  possible  for  the  mother  to  be  a  mother  in 
the  full  sense  of  the  word,  to  care  for  her 
baby  during  the  first  years  of  its  life.  In 
many  European  cities  where  the  Socialists 
have  secured  the  necessary  power  they  have 
actually  made  this  possible.  To  the  mother, 
soon  after  the  birth  of  her  baby,  goes  a  rep- 
resentative of  the  city,  bearing  this  message: 
"  Mother,  our  city  cannot  afford  to  have  you 
neglect  your  baby  for  the  sake  of  going  to 
work  in  factory,  workshop  or  store.  That 
would  be  an  ill  exchange  for  the  city  and  for 
the  nation.  The  highest  service  you  can 
render  society,  the  most  valuable  labor  you 
can  perform,  is  to  bring  up  your  baby  in 
strength  of  body  and  character.  For  that 


60       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

service  the  city  feels  that  it  can  well  afford 
to  pay  you  as  much  as  any  manufacturer  can 
afford  to  pay  you  for  tending  a  soulless 
machine.  Not  as  a  dependent  upon  charity, 
but  as  a  valuable  servant  of  the  city,  you  are 
to  be  paid  for  the  best  work  of  which  you  are 
capable  —  building  up  the  soul  of  your  child 
in  a  healthy  and  noble  body." 

There  is  not  a  single  measure  for  the 
physical  welfare  of  children  upon  which  ex- 
perts are  now  agreed  which  the  Socialists  of 
the  world  have  not  long  advocated.  They 
were  the  first  to  see  the  close  relation  be- 
tween high  infantile  mortality  and  a  milk 
supply  conducted  for  profit.  They  were 
pioneers  in  demanding  the  establishment  of 
municipal  depots  for  the  supply  of  whole- 
some milk  for  infant  feeding.  They  were 
the  first,  also,  to  recognize  the  plight  of  the 
under-nourished  school  child  and  the  need 
of  providing  school  lunches  for  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  children,  either  free  of  charge  or 
at  a  small  cost.  Finally,  the  Socialists  are 
justly  entitled  to  most  of  the  credit  for  the 


THE   ANGEL'S    GIFTS  61 

splendid  development  of  the  system  of 
medical  inspection  and  attention  in  our  pub- 
lic schools.  They  were  among  the  first  in 
modern  times  to  rediscover  the  close  relation 
of  educability  to  physical  health.  They 
were  among  the  first  to  see  the  utter  futility 
of  the  old  methods  of  medical  inspection, 
which  simply  sought  for  cases  of  contagious 
disease  and  excluded  the  children  from  the 
schools,  heedless  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
often  uncared  for  and,  through  playing  with 
other  children  in  their  homes  and  upon  the 
streets,  were  as  dangerous  as  though  they 
had  remained  in  school. 

Nowadays,  in  our  most  enlightened  and 
progressive  cities,  medical  inspection  aims 
not  at  the  detection  of  contagious  diseases 
alone,  but  at  the  detection  of  every  physical 
weakness  or  defect  which  may  be  a  hindrance 
to  the  soundest  development  of  the  child, 
physically,  mentally  and  morally.  Defects 
of  vision,  of  hearing  and  of  breathing  are 
sought  out  and,  in  many  cases,  properly 
treated,  so  that  the  child  is  given  a  chance 


62       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

to  attain  the  mens  sana  in  corpore  sano, 
which  is  the  ideal  of  the  wise  teacher  and  the 
wise  parent.  Dental  clinics  in  connection 
with  the  schools,  outdoor  schools  for  weak 
and  convalescent  children  and  school  sani- 
toria  have  been  advocated  at  first  almost 
exclusively  by  Socialists,  and  have  been  es- 
tablished as  a  result  of  the  growing  accept- 
ance of  the  Socialist  ideal  of  social  respon- 
sibility for  the  welfare  of  the  children. 

The  true  Socialist  conceives  of  society  as 
a  great  Over-Parent,  not  supplanting  the 
protection  and  responsibility  of  the  natural 
parents,  but  supplementing  them  by  other 
and  more  far-reaching  protection  and  respon- 
sibility. He  would  have  society,  like  a  great, 
universal  mother,  with  all  the  wisdom  and 
power  of  all  the  ages,  protect  all  children 
from  harm  and  tenderly  lead  them  in  the 
ways  of  Righteousness  and  Fellowship  and 
Peace. 

XI 

Socialism  and  motherhood  are  one  in  their 
hatred  of  war  and  militarism  and  one  in 


THE    AN  GEL' S    GIFTS  63 

their  love  of  peace.  Every  mother's  heart 
holds  dear  the  great  vision  of  world-peace, 
of  a  time  coming  when  the  red  ruin  of  Mars 
shall  no  longer  ravage  the  earth.  And  in 
the  heart  of  every  Socialist  the  same  precious 
vision  is  held  equally  dear.  As  the  greatest 
single  force  in  the  world  aiming  to  destroy 
militarism  and  bring  about  peace,  the  Social- 
ist movement  must  appeal  to  mothers. 

Ask  the  thoughtful  mother  why  she  hates 
war  and  militarism,  and  she  will  answer: 
"  I  am  a  woman  —  a  mother.  All  the 
strength  and  pride  of  men  which  war  has 
disfigured,  maimed  and  slaughtered  upon  all 
the  battlefields  of  history  have  been  carried 
beneath  the  hearts  of  mothers  like  myself, 
mothers  who  dreamed  of  joyous  and  beauti- 
ful lives  for  their  sons.  We,  the  mothers 
of  the  race,  have  been  most  despoiled  by 
war:  we  have  paid  the  supreme  forfeit. 
The  lives  blotted  out  in  the  bloody  mists  of 
war  have  all  been  conceived  in  our  wombs  and 
nursed  at  our  breasts.  The  lives  broken 
and  marred  by  war  have  all  been  blood  of 


64       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

our  blood,  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of  our 
flesh.  Why,  then,  should  we  mothers  do 
aught  but  hate  war  and  love  peace?" 

Ask  the  thoughtful  Socialist  why  he  hates 
war  and  militarism,  and  he  will  answer: 
"  I  am  a  Socialist.  All  my  hope  and  faith 
I  repose  in  the  working  class,  the  makers  of 
bread.  To  it  I  belong.  Its  woes  are  my 
woes,  its  foes  are  my  foes.  In  every  war 
the  burdens  fall  most  heavily  upon  my  class. 
It  is  from  my  class  that  most  of  the  victims 
of  war  are  drawn.  It  is  upon  my  class  that 
the  heavy  task  of  paying  for  war's  wicked 
waste  inevitably  falls.  The  labor  spent  in 
making  the  implements  of  war,  even  during 
the  years  of  so-called  peace,  would  feed  all 
the  children  of  my  class  who  now  perish 
from  hunger.  Why,  then,  should  we  of  the 
working  class  do  aught  but  hate  war  and  love 
peace?  " 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  the  Social- 
ist movement  is  universally  recognized  as  a 
mighty  force  making  for  universal  peace, 
and  that  every  political  victory  of  the  Social- 


ists  is  interpreted  as  a  fresh  blow  at  mili- 
tarism. "  The  Social  Democracy  is  Ger- 
many's greatest  peace  organization," 
declared  Professor  Mommsen,  the  famous 
German  historian,  and  that  is  becoming  so 
well  understood  that  the  Socialists  are  ad- 
mitted to  be  the  most  powerful  preservers 
of  peace  in  Europe,  even  by  those  who  are 
most  opposed  to  them.  When  the  first  news 
of  the  sweeping  Socialist  victories  in  the 
Reichstag  elections  of  1912  was  conveyed  to 
August  Bebel,  the  veteran  Socialist  leader, 
he  is  reported  to  have  exclaimed  with  deep 
emotion,  "Good!  The  peace  of  Europe  is 
now  assured!  "  That  was  no  idle  boast.  It 
is  safe  to  say  that  in  England,  where  fear  of 
a  war  with  Germany  rested  like  a  menacing 
cloud,  the  Socialist  victory  was  hailed  with 
as  much  joy  as  in  Germany  itself.  When, 
soon  after  the  Reichstag  elections,  one  of 
the  parliamentary  representatives  of  the 
Social  Democratic  Party  of  Germany  visited 
Great  Britain,  he  was  astonished  to  find  that 
wherever  he  went,  even  in  the  remotest  ham- 


66       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

lets,  he  was  hailed  by  the  people  with  the 
greatest  enthusiasm.  No  great  warrior  and 
conqueror  of  peoples  ever  made  such  a 
triumphal  tour  in  modern  times  as  did  that 
simple  representative  of  German  Socialism. 
And  the  secret  of  it  was  simply  that  the  peo- 
ple of  Great  Britain,  without  regard  to  party, 
saw  in  the  Socialist  Victory  a  splendid  pledge 
that  peace  between  Germany  and  England 
would  be  maintained. 

With  very  rare  exceptions,  wars  have  al- 
ways been  carried  on  in  the  interests  of  rul- 
ing and  exploiting  classes.  Modern  wars 
are  almost  invariably  wars  for  markets,  that 
is  to  say,  they  are  waged  for  the  purpose 
of  enabling  the  master  class  in  one  country 
to  force  its  surplus  commodities  upon  the 
people  of  some  other  country.  1  he  hope 
for  world  peace  is  inseparable  from  the  hope 
of  the  proletariat.  It  is  the  interest  of  the 
working  class  to  wage  war  against  wrar. 
Marx  understood  that,  and  in  an  address 
written  for  the  International  Workingmen's 
Association  declared,  "  The  alliance  of  the 


THE    ANGEL'S    GIFTS  67 

working    classes    of    all    countries    will    ulti- 
mately kill  war." 

The  abolition  of  war!  What  an  inspira- 
tion to  believe  that  this  great  international 
movement  will  make  real  the  sublime  vision 
of  universal  peace !  That  the  genius  of 
mankind,  inspired  by  the  Socialist  ideal,  will 
forge  into  tools  of  peaceful  industry  the  cruel 
weapons  of  destruction !  That  never  again 
shall  vultures  prey  upon  bloody  and  corpse- 
strewn  battlefields !  That  instead  of  spend- 
ing more  than  seventy  per  cent,  of  our  na- 
tional income  s  upon  wars  past  and  present 
and  to  prepare  for  future  wars,  we  shall  de- 
vote all  our  resources  to  the  great  wrork  of 
making  it  easier  for  men  and  women  to  live 
healthy,  happy  and  beautiful  lives! 

XII 

This,  then,  is  the  programme  of 
Socialism.  That  it  makes  a  powerful 
appeal  to  the  mother-instinct  cannot  be 

8  In  the  United  States,  during  the  thirty  years,  1879- 
1909,  71.6  per  cent,  of  our  total  national  income  was  so 
spent! 


63       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

denied.  It  is  vibrant  with  the  love  and 
tenderness  of  motherhood.  None  need  fear 
this  programme  save  the  powers  that  lay 
chains  upon  the  bodies  and  souls  of  the 
children  of  men  and  bind  them  down  when 
they  would  climb  to  the  heights  in  answer  to 
the  Challenge  of  the  Spirit. 

The  message  of  Socialism  is  a  message 
of  Life  and  Liberty  and  Love.  It  promises 
to  destroy  the  political,  social  and  economic 
disabilities  imposed  upon  womanhood:  to 
give  the  mothers  of  the  race  equal  freedom 
with  the  fathers  of  the  race.  It  pledges  it- 
self to  destroy  those  conditions  of  life  and 
labor  which  weaken  the  mothers  and  deny 
to  their  babies  the  right  to  be  well  born.  It 
claims  for  every  child  all  the  advantages  of 
healthful  and  beautiful  environment.  It 
would  destroy  the  dread  fear  of  want  which 
drives  the  mother  from  the  service  of  her 
child  into  the  service  of  a  great  factory.  It 
would  bestow  upon  every  child,  as  its  right- 
ful heritage,  opportunity  to  develop  all  its 
powers.  It  would  apply  the  principles  of 


THE   ANGEL'S    GIFTS  69 

the  family  to  the  state.  It  would  abolish 
the  body  and  soul  debasing  labor  of  children 
and  give  to  the  little  ones  their  Kingdom 
of  Laughter  and  Dreams.  It  would  end  the 
waste  of  human  lives  by  poverty,  and  make 
true  wealth  possible  for  all  and  illth  for  none. 
It  would  put  an  end  to  war  —  the  war  of 
classes  as  well  as  the  war  of  nations  —  and 
organize  and  direct  the  genius  and  power  of 
the  race,  now  so  largely  given  to  destruction, 
to  the  enrichment  of  life  for  all  and  the  real- 
ization of  Human  Brotherhood. 

Socialism  comes  to  the  mother  as  an  Angel 
of  Light  and  Life,  bearing  the  torch  of  a 
great  hope.  "  I  am  Life  Abundant,"  cries 
the  Angel,  "  and  I  bring  you  as  gifts  the 
Freedom  and  Opportunity  and  Joy  and  Peace 
for  which  you  have  prayed.  See,  my  Sister, 
Mother  of  Men,  all  these  are  yours  if  you 
will  put  forth  your  hand  and  receive  them." 

And  the  mother  yearns  to  take  the  Angel's 
gifts,  but  does  not.  Fear  holds  her  back. 
She  is  the  Sltrce  of  the  Fear. 


II 

THE  MOTHER'S  FEAR 


IT  is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  so 
many  thoughtful  mothers  oppose  Social- 
ism and  remain  aloof  from  the  Socialist 
movement,  despite  the  powerful  appeal  to 
their  hearts  of  its  promise  of  political,  social 
and  economic  equality  for  men  and  women 
and  equality  of  opportunity  for  all  children. 
To  the  attainment  of  these  ideal  conditions 
they  would  gladly  devote  their  lives  could 
they  but  feel  certain  that,  in  the  effort  to  at- 
tain them,  Socialism  would  not  create  new 
evils  or  destroy  some  good  of  priceless  value 
already  attained. 

Probably  the  vast  majority  of  those 
women  who  oppose  Socialism  do  so  because 
they  have  been  taught  to  believe  that  it  would 
abolish  monogamic  marriage  and  utterly  de- 
stroy the  institution  of  private  family  life 
which  rests  upon  that  form  of  marriage. 
The  defenders  of  the  existing  social  order 
70 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  71 

have  charged  the  Socialist  movement  with 
the  advocacy  of  "  Free  Love  "  with  so  much 
persistency  that  we  cannot  wonder  that  so 
many  women  dread  it  as  an  unspeakably  evil 
thing.  They  believe,  with  ample  warrant, 
that  the  private  family  based  upon  the  per- 
manent and  voluntary  union  of  one  man  to 
one  woman  is  an  essential  condition  of  true 
civilization.  They  believe,  with  ample  war- 
rant, that  whatever  menaces  such  family  life, 
menaces  all  civilization  and  progress.  Not 
until  their  fears  are  dispelled  will  they  em- 
brace the  Angel  of  Socialism  and  accept  the 
gifts  she  proffers. 

Women  are  not  opposed  to  anything 
which  can  rightly  be  called  "  Free  Love." 
They  are  not  afraid  of  the  freedom  of  love. 
They  know  that  perfect  love  can  only  exist 
where  there  is  perfect  freedom.  Every  nor- 
mal woman  believes  that  unfettered  love  is 
the  noblest  sanction  of  human  marriage  and 
parenthood;  that  the  baser  considerations  of 
wealth,  title,  social  position,  and  the  like, 
ought  not  to  enter  into  the  sacred  relations 


72       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

of  marriage  and  motherhood  and  father- 
hood. Every  woman  of  normal  mind  and 
heart  believes  that  a  woman  should  no  more 
be  driven  into  marriage  and  motherhood  for 
the  sake  of  securing  the  assurance  of  food, 
clothing  and  shelter  than  she  should  be 
ravished  by  bestial  brutes.  And  every 
woman  of  normal  mind  and  heart  believes 
that  loveless  marriage,  whether  for  the  ad- 
vantages of  social  position,  or  for  mere  main- 
tenance, is  a  degradation  of  womanhood, 
a  form  of  prostitution  in  reality.  No  church 
ceremonial  and  no  altar  can  sanctify  such 
marriages.  That  men  and  women  should  be 
free  from  economic  bondage  —  free  to 
marry  only  in  response  to  the  promptings  of 
pure  affection,  no  woman  will  question.  But 
that  is  not  the  freedom  that  is  referred  to 
when  Socialists  are  charged  with  being  Free 
Lovers. 

What  is  meant  by  the  charge  is  that  Social- 
ism seeks  to  destroy  monogamic  marriage, 
and  to  substitute  for  it  some  other  form  of 
sex  relationship.  Xo  matter  how  these  sub- 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  73 

stitutes  for  the  present  marriage  system  differ 
in  character  from  one  another,  they  are  all 
grouped  together  by  the  enemies  of  Social- 
ism under  the  misleading  generic  title  of 
"  Free  Love."  The  fact  that  some  of  the 
substitutes  would  greatly  lessen  social  author- 
ity and  responsibility,  and  to  a  corresponding 
degree  free  the  individual  from  existing  re- 
straints of  law  or  custom,  while  others  would 
greatly  increase  social  responsibility  and 
authority,  and  lessen  personal  choice,  is 
ignored  :  they  are  all  covered  by  the  single 
term  of  popular  opprobrium,  "  Free  Love." 

II 

It  will  help  us  greatly  in  our  consideration 
of  this  subject  to  get  this  fact  very  clearly 
fixed  in  our  minds.  Plato,  the  great  Greek 
philosopher,  wrote  a  book  describing  the 
ideal  social  state  as  he  conceived  it.  He 
first  of  all  considered  all  the  problems  arising 
in  the  relations  of  imperfect  humanity,  and 
then,  just  as  an  inventor  tries  to  invent  a 
better  mechanism  than  one  which  has  been 


74       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

found  to  be  unsuitable,  he  tried  to  invent 
better-working  social  relations.  These  he 
described  in  his  Utopia,  The  Republic. 
This  is  now  universally  regarded  as  one  of 
the  great  masterpieces  of  the  world's  litera- 
ture. As  such,  we  enjoy  it,  while  rejecting 
much  of  its  philosophy  and  most  of  its  de- 
vices. Its  philosophy  and  its  devices  reflect 
the  limitations  of  the  age  in  which  Plato 
lived. 

Among  the  problems  which  Plato  sought 
to  solve  were  the  problems  of  marriage  and 
parenthood.  He  saw  that  the  most  funda- 
mental of  social  relations  were  far  from 
uniformly  successful.  There  were  many  un- 
happy and  unfortunate  marriages  then  as 
now.  Because  women  were  regarded  as 
chattels  in  his  day,  Plato,  who  had  reached 
the  conclusion  that  communism  was  the  only 
remedy  for  the  evils  arising  out  of  property 
relations,  naturally  concluded  that  for  the 
evils  connected  with  the  human  chattel, 
woman,  the  same  remedy  was  needed. 
Therefore,  he  advocated  the  common  owner- 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  75 

ship  of  women  as  well  as  of  all  other  forms 
of  property.  The  state  was  to  own  and  con- 
trol all  forms  of  property,  including  women. 
Through  its  officials,  the  state  would,  in 
Plato's  scheme,  regulate  procreation  and  the 
sexual  relations  generally.  Anticipating  our 
modern  Eugenists  of  the  extreme  school, 
Plato  provided  for  the  state  regulation  of 
the  mating  and  breeding  of  the  human 
species.  Only  those  men  and  women  who 
possessed  certain  physical,  mental  and  moral 
qualities  were  to  be  permitted  to  breed,  and 
there  was  to  be  no  permanent  union  of  a 
particular  man  with  a  particular  woman.  As 
soon  as  babies  were  born  they  were  to  be 
taken  from  their  mothers  and  placed  in 
communal  institutions,  in  which  all  mothers 
would  nurse  all  babies  except  their  own  with- 
out discrimination  or  favor.  The  most 
elaborate  precautions  were  provided  against 
any  mother  being  able  to  recognize  her  own 
child.  Of  course,  it  is  evident  that  in  all 
this  Plato  had  only  one  purpose,  namely, 
to  insure  the  confining  of  procreation  to  the 


76        SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

best  developed  men  and  women;  that  the  un- 
fit were  prevented  from  perpetuating  their 
kind.  He  aimed  thus  to  produce  what  the 
modern  Eugenists  call  the  Super  Race. 

Now,  it  is  quite  obvious  that  it  is  a  mis- 
nomer to  call  Pluto's  scheme  by  the  high- 
sounding  term,  Free  Love.  In  the  first 
place,  the  romantic  element,  the  mutual  love 
of  the  man  for  the  woman  and  the  woman  for 
the  man,  hardly  enters  into  it  at  all.  In  the 
second  place,  there  is  no  freedom  for  the 
individual  in  the  scheme.  It  is  a  very 
elaborate  scheme  of  state  regulated  stirpi- 
culture,  which  in  practice  would  reduce 
human  beings  to  the  level  of  the  animals  in 
the  stud  farm.  It  is  a  scheme  of  compulsory 
mating,  not  of  Free  Love. 

Socialism  is  not  even  remotely  connected 
with  either  Plato's  philosophy  or  his  scheme. 
These  reflect  the  limitations  of  Athenian 
civilization  three  centuries  before  Christ, 
while  Socialism,  whether  considered  as  a 
philosophy  or  as  a  movement,  is  of  modern 


THE   MOTHER'S    FEAR  V7 

origin.  Yet  it  is  by  no  means  uncommon  to 
find  critics  of  Socialism  harking  back  to 
Plato's  Republic  and  making  their  criti- 
cisms of  it  part  of  their  indictment  of  Social- 
ism. 

Ill 

The  polar  opposite  of  Plato's  ideal  of 
sex  relationship  is  the  ideal  of  modern  An- 
archism, to  which  the  term  "  Free  Love  " 
may  be  properly  applied.  The  Anarchist 
regards  society  as  being  merely  an  aggrega- 
tion of  individuals,  and  believes  that  the  ag- 
gregation of  individuals  can  have  no  right 
greater  than  the  single  individual  can  have. 
The  essence  of  liberty,  as  the  Anarchist  sees 
it,  is  the  right  of  the  individual  to  determine 
for  himself  what  is  right  and  what  is  not 
right.  Just  as  no  individual  can,  without 
tyranny,  control  the  actions  of  another  indi- 
vidual, society  as  a  whole  cannot  rightly 
control  the  actions  of  any  individual.  Philo- 
sophically and  practically,  Anarchism  is  based 
upon  the  supremacy  of  the  individual.  It 
denies  the  doctrine  of  social  supremacy  and 


78       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

responsibility  upon  which  all  laws  and  govern- 
ments and  institutions  for  regulating  human 
conduct  rest. 

Anarchism  is,  therefore,  opposed  to  the 
legal  forms  of  marriage,  regarding  them  as 
invasions  by  society  of  the  liberty  of  the 
individual.  It  opposes  every  interference 
by  the  state  in  what  it  believes  to  be  a  matter 
for  the  individuals  immediately  concerned  to 
regulate  according  to  their  own  desires.  An- 
archism teaches  that  the  only  sanction  neces- 
sary for  the  union  of  a  man  and  woman  in 
marriage  is  the  desire  for  such  union  by  the 
man  and  the  woman;  that  the  duration  of  the 
union  must  depend  solely  upon  their  will 
and  pleasure;  that  any  legal  tie  which  binds 
men  and  women  to  one  another  against  their 
will,  when  they  have  ceased  to  love  one  an- 
other and  to  regard  such  union  as  indispen- 
sable to  their  happiness,  is  wrong.  The  An- 
archist believes  that  love  should  be  the  only 
bond  uniting  men  and  women  in  marriage, 
and  that  every  form  of  restraint  or  com- 
pulsion is  wrong.  If  a  man  and  a  woman 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  79 

outgrow  their  love  for  each  other,  they  should 
be  free  to  dissolve  their  union  without  con- 
sulting anybody  or  asking  the  permission  of 
anybody.  And  if  they  desire  to  enter  into 
new  unions,  they  should  be  free  to  do  so. 
That  is  Free  Love,  using  that  term  in  its 
true  sense,  and  that  is  the  Anarchist  ideal. 

We  may  not  believe  in  that  theory  of  mar- 
riage. Most  of  us  do  not.  We  may  be- 
lieve that  in  practice  it  would  be  certain  to 
work  infinite  hardship  and  suffering,  and  that 
it  would  be  a  retrogressive  step  and  not  a 
step  forward.  Perhaps  most  of  us  do  be- 
lieve that.  Such  opinions,  however,  ought 
not  to  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  it  is  perfectly 
possible  for  one  to  hold  the  Anarchist  view 
of  marriage,  and  to  apply  it  in  actual  life, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  to  believe  in  and 
practice  the  strictest  monogamy.  Dangerous 
as  the  Anarchist  philosophy  m-ay  be,  it  is  not 
incompatible  with  a  high  standard  of 
personal  conduct.  Free  Love,  as  the  An- 
archist conceives  it,  may  lead  to  promis- 
cuity of  sexual  relations,  and  many  of  us 


8o       SOCIALISM   AND    MOTHERHOOD 

believe  that  in  practice  it  would  certainly  do 
so,  but  the  two  things  are  not  synonymous. 

On  the  other  hand,  legal  marriage  does 
not  insure  perfect  obedience  to  the  mono- 
gamic  code.  There  is  no  particular  virtue  in 
the  legal  form  itself.  What  counts  is  the 
recognition  of  social  authority  and  respon- 
sibility symbolized  by  the  legal  form. 
Monogamy  is  perfectly  or  imperfectly  at- 
tained in  proportion  to  the  degree  to  which 
recognition  of  that  social  authority  and 
responsibility,  supplemented  by  personal 
loyalty  and  affection,  is  effective.  That  per- 
fect loyalty  and  chastity  are  not  made  certain 
by  legal  forms  is  all  too  unhappily  evident 
to  all  of  us.  But  most  of  us  believe  that, 
despite  all  its  shortcomings,  despite  the 
alarming  number  of  failures  and  divorces, 
legal  marriage  does  make  for  greater  sta- 
bility of  family  life  than  would  otherwise 
be  possible,  and  that  the  stability  of  fam- 
ily life  is  a  necessary  condition  of  true 
civilization.  What  we  hope  for,  there- 
fore, is  not  the  abolition  of  legal  marriage, 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  81 

the  denial  of  social  authority  and  respon- 
sibility, but  the  improvement  of  marriage, 
the  maintenance,  and,  if  necessary,  the 
further  development,  of  social  authority 
over  and  responsibility  for  marriage.  Pos 
sibly  it  will  be  found  that  the  improvement 
of  marriage,  its  greater  permanence,  and  its 
greater  efficiency  as  a  promoter  of  monog- 
amy, will  result  from  a  general  social  and 
economic  readjustment,  rather  than  from  al- 
terations in  the  laws  affecting  marriage 
specially  designed  to  that  end. 

IV 

Between  the  sex  servitude  advocated 
by  Plato  and  the  denial  of  social  authority 
in  the  Anarchist  ideal,  both  comprehended 
in  the  general  unthinking  denunciation  of 
"  Free  Love,"  we  shall  find  many  very  dif- 
ferent forms  of  family  life  and  sex  relation- 
ship, to  every  one  of  which  the  same 
term  has  been  uncritically  applied.  They 
have  all  been  as  uncritically  denounced  as 
"  Socialistic,"  their  shortcomings  have  been 


82       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

charged  against  the  Socialists,  notwithstand- 
ing the  fact  that  they  were  generally  of  reli- 
gious origin  and  significance,  and  rarely  as- 
sociated with  movements  remotely  or  closely 
connected  with  Socialism. 

We  have,  for  example,  opposition  to  mar- 
riage on  the  part  of  certain  sects  of  religious 
celibates,  like  the  Shakers.  Because  the 
Shakers  practiced  communism  among  them- 
selves, the  unfair  and  the  uncritical  have 
taken  the  accusations  made  against  the 
Shakers  and  woven  them  into  their  indict- 
ment of  Socialism.  The  Shakers  were  ac- 
cused of  being  Free  Lovers,  of  attempting 
to  destroy  the  home,  therefore  the  charge  is 
made  against  the  Socialists!  Curiously 
enough,  however,  the  intensely  religious  char- 
acteristics of  Shakerism  are  ignored,  and  the 
Socialists  are  denounced  as  Atheists. 

The  truth  is,  of  course,  that  no  sort  of  re- 
lation exists  between  the  teachings  and  prac- 
tices of  Ann  Lee  and  her  followers  and  the 
teachings  and  practices  of  modern  Socialism. 
The  communism  of  the  Shakers,  like  their 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  83 

contempt  for  marriage  and  their  glorifica- 
tion of  celibacy  and  their  practice  of  confes- 
sion, was  exclusively  a  religious  practice,  the 
result  of  their  special  interpretation  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures.  It  seems  absurd  to  ap- 
ply the  term  Free  Love  to  their  peculiar  view 
of  sexual  relations.  They  regarded  mar- 
riage as  at  best  an  evil,  viewed  with  con- 
tempt the  "  generative  order  "  to  which  it 
pertained  and  extolled  absolute  celibacy  as 
the  highest  virtue.  Their  four  cardinal  prin- 
ciples, Virginal  Purity,  Christian  Com- 
munism, Confession  of  Sin  and  Separation 
from  the  World,  as  well  as  most  of  their 
theological  beliefs  concerning  the  Duality  of 
the  Godhead,  the  Millennium,  the  Second 
Coming  of  Christ,  and  similar  matters,  were 
quite  commonly  held  by  many  Christian 
sects  in  mediaeval  times.  Shakerism  and  all 
similar  movements  are  properly  connected, 
not  with  Socialism,  but  with  the  development 
of  Christianity. 

We  find  the  term  Free  Love  applied  with 
more  reason  to  the  various  forms  of  group 


84       SOCIALISM    AND    M  O  T  H  E  R  H  0  O  D 

marriage  and  sex  communism  which  have 
been  advocated  and  practiced  by  various 
sects,  ancient  and  modern.  From  1847  until 
1879  the  followers  of  John  Humphrey 
Noyes,  the  Perfectionists  of  Oneida,  ad- 
vocated and  practiced  sex  communism 
through  what  they  termed  "  complex  mar- 
riage." All  the  men  of  the  community  were 
jointly  married  to  all  the  women  of  the  com- 
munity, so  that  every  man  was  husband  to 
every  woman  and  every  woman  wife  to  every 
man. 

Like  Shakerism,  Perfectionism  was  es- 
sentially of  Christian  origin  and  in  nowise 
connected  with  Socialism  as  that  term  is  prop- 
erly understood.  Noyes  derived  his  ideas 
of  communism  in  goods  and  communism  in 
sex  relations  from  the  New  Testament,  from 
the  story  of  the  day  of  Pentecost.  Salva- 
tion from  sin  through  the  grace  of  Christ, 
the  duality  of  God's  nature,  the  possibility 
of  attaining  perfect  holiness  were  funda- 
mental to  his  teaching.  In  every  respect, 
Perfectionism  was  a  modern  revival  of  a  very 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  85 

ancient  form  of  religious  sectarianism  which 
flourished  in  the  first  few  centuries  of  Chris- 
tendom, and  again  in  mediaeval  times,  as  wit- 
ness the  Apostolicans,  the  Adamites,  and 
similar  mediaeval  sects. 

Yet  another  form  of  sex  relationship  and 
family  life  claims  our  attention  as  being  op- 
posed to  monogamy  and  the  form  of  family 
life  based  upon  it  —  polygamy.  Whether 
we  limit  ourselves  to  Mormonism  in  our  ex- 
amination of  polygamy,  or  go  back  to  the 
time  of  the  Anabaptists,  we  shall  find  that, 
leaving  primitive  and  uncivilized  peoples  out 
of  account,  polygamy  almost  invariably  ap- 
pears as  a  principle  of  religious  sectarianism, 
with  religious  sanctions.  Nowhere  does  it 
appear  connected,  however  remotely,  with 
the  development  of  modern  Socialism,  the 
movement  of  the  working  class  to  eman- 
cipate itself  from  economic  exploitation  and 
tyranny. 

To  sum  up  this  phase  of  our  discussion: 
there  can  be  no  wisdom  or  justice  in  the  in- 
discriminate lumping  together  under  the 


86       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

term  Free  Love  forms  of  sex  relationship  so 
different  as  the  state  regulated  stirpiculture 
of  Plato,  the  celibacy  of  Ann  Lee  and  her 
disciples,  the  group  marriage  of  the  Perfec- 
tionists, and  the  polygamy  of  Jan  of  Leyden 
and  Brigham  Young.  Nor  can  there  be  any 
wisdom  or  justice  in  charging  to  the  account 
of  the  Socialist  our  criticisms  of  any  of  these, 
not  one  of  which  was  connected  in  any  degree 
whatsoever  with  the  Socialist  movement,  and 
all  of  which,  with  the  exception  of  Plato's 
scheme,  were  of  religious  origin  —  offshoots 
of  Christianity. 

v 

Although  it  is  somewhat  of  a  digression, 
it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  sex  relation- 
ships advocated  and  practiced  by  many  of  the 
religious  sects  combined  with  their  romantic 
religious  mysticism  much  of  the  harsher 
pagan  utilitarianism  of  Plato.  Xot  infre- 
quently, we  find  theories  of  eugenics  and  stir- 
piculture advocated,  and,  to  a  limited  extent, 
practiced. 

Take    the    Shakers,    for   example:     Elder 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  87 

Eades,  one  of  their  ablest  publicists  and 
leaders,  likened  the  "  state  of  mankind  "  to 
a  house,  consisting  of  basement,  ground  floor 
and  upper  story.  Those  living  on  the  "  up- 
per floor  "  are  the  true  Christians,  for  they, 
like  Christ,  are  celibates.  They  have  ad- 
vanced beyond  the  world  of  the  flesh  with 
all  its  lusts  and  affections.  Their  concern  is 
with  the  "  soul-world  "  only.  Risen  above  the 
"  generative  order,"  they  despise  marriage 
and  procreation  and  dwell  in  celibacy,  man's 
highest  state.  Those  dwelling  on  the 
"  ground  floor "  are  inferior  mortals  who 
still  live  in  the  "  generative  stage."  Their 
concern  is  with  the  physical  life,  with  the 
body  and  the  mind.  For  them  marriage  and 
procreation  are  permissible.  Their  inter- 
mediate state  is  well  enough  in  its  secular 
way,  but  they  cannot  be  Christians  on  the 
"  ground  floor,"  because  Christ  did  not 
dwell  there.  They  are  ruled  by  the  flesh  and 
its  lusts,  the  love  of  individuals  one  for  an- 
other, and  by  the  idolatries  of  parentage. 
Those  who  dwell  in  the  "  basement  "  are  still 


88       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

inferior.  They  are  the  weak  of  body,  mind 
and  morals.  For  all  such,  procreation  is 
wrong  and  should  be  prevented. 

Another  of  the  Shaker  leaders,  Elder 
Prescott,  while  holding  to  the  ideal  of  celi- 
bacy, vigorously  advocated  scientific  regula- 
tion of  procreation  among  those  on  the 
"  ground  floor  "  and  the  prevention  of  pro- 
creation by  the  dwellers  in  the  "  basement." 
From  Plato  to  the  most  radical  Eugenist  of 
today,  the  argument  has  never  been  more 
baldly  stated: 

"  What  is  the  reason  man  does  not  know 
how  to  improve  his  own  race,  as  well  as  he 
knows  how  to  improve  the  ox,  the  sheep,  the 
horse,  and  the  feathered  tribes?  He  does 
know  how  —  it  is  by  observing  the  same  law, 
walking  by  the  same  rule,  and  minding  the 
same  things.  At  our  state  and  county  fairs 
we  see  that  the  lower  order  of  animals  has 
been  carried  to  a  high  degree  of  perfection 
by  stirpiculture  or  scientific  propagation;  and 
it  is  by  the  same  means  that  the  human  race 
can  be  improved  physically,  i.  e.,  by  scientific 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  89 

selection  and  combination  in  obedience  to 
certain  given  laws  of  reproduction.  As 
things  are,  multitudes  of  persons  of  both 
sexes  are  no  more  suitable  to  reproduce  hu- 
man beings  in  the  image  of  God  than 
the  roach-backed,  crooked-legged,  spindle- 
shanked,  slab-sided,  Indian  ponies  are  suit- 
able for  generating  the  best  types  of  the 
noble  horse  !  "  1 

Precisely  the  same  views  were  held  by 
John  Humphrey  Noyes  and  his  followers, 
the  Perfectionists,  and  to  some  extent  prac- 
ticed within  their  institution  of  "  complex 
marriage."  2  It  is  a  strange  mixture  of  reli- 
gious mysticism  and  secular  utilitarianism 
which  one  finds  in  these  religious  communi- 
ties ! 

VI 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  the 
cry  of  Free  Love,  now  raised  against  the 
Socialist  movement,  to  prejudice  the  minds  of 

1  Quoted  by  HIVDS,  American  Communities  (Edition  of 
1908)  pp.  56-57. 

-  See  e.p.,  Scientific  Propagation,  by  J.  II.  NoYES 
(pamphlet) . 


90       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

the  people  against  it,  has  been  raised  against 
many  other  popular  movements.  There  is 
hardly  a  great  popular  movement  in  history, 
whether  religious  or  secular,  against  which 
the  charge  of  seeking  to  abolish  marriage 
and  family  relations  has  not  been  brought  by 
its  enemies.  The  noblest  men  and  women  in 
all  ages  have  been  subjected  to  this  partic- 
ularly vicious  attack.  The  charge  has  been 
made  against  the  Catholic  Church  by  fanat- 
ical Protestants  and  against  Protestantism  by 
fanatical  Catholics.  It  was  made  against  the 
Quakers,  and  against  the  Abolitionists. 
The  pioneers  of  the  Woman  Suffrage  move- 
ment were  bitterly  assailed  as  advocates  of 
Free  Love.  The  same  charge  was  made 
against  the  Chartists  in  England  in  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  was 
hurled  at  the  followers  of  Fremont,  the 
founders  of  the  present  Republican  Party, 
during  Fremont's  campaign  in  i856.3 

The     charge     was     never     directed     with 

3  Cf.  Applied  Socialism,  by  JOHN  SPARGO,   Chapter  IX, 
for  a  more  detailed  account  of  this. 


THE   MOTHER'S    FEAR  91 

greater  energy  and  bitterness  against  any  hu- 
man being  than  against  the  greatest  and 
noblest  American  of  all  —  Abraham  Lin- 
coln. Incredible  as  it  may  seem  to  us  today, 
Lincoln  had  to  bear  the  insulting  charge  of 
advocating  Free  Love  !  Yes,  Lincoln, 

"  A  man  that  matched  the  mountains,  and  compelled 
The  stars  to  look  our  way  and  honor  us  " 

bore  that  with  many  another  indignity.  No 
sooner  had  he  been  nominated  by  the  Re- 
publican Party,  in  1860,  than  the  attack  be- 
gan. There  was,  for  example,  the  cartoon, 
familiar  in  every  household,  entitled  "  The 
Republican  Party  Going  to  the  Right 
House,"  showing  Lincoln  riding  into  a 
lunatic  asylum,  astride  a  rail  carried  by 
Horace  Greeley.  Behind  Lincoln  march  his 
followers,  a  motley  crew  of  "  long  haired 
men  and  short  haired  women,"  each  pro- 
claiming his  or  her  special  fad  or  folly. 
There  is  the  woman  who  follows  Lincoln  be- 
cause she  feels  "  a  passional  attraction  " 
every  time  she  sees  "  his  lovely  face." 


92       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

There  is  the  man  who  cries  out,  "  I  represent 
the  Free  Love  element,  and  expect  to  have 
free  license  to  carry  out  its  principles." 
Close  by  is  the  man  —  a  familiar  friend  — 
who  announces,  "  I  want  religion  abolished, 
and  the  book  of  Mormon  made  the  standard 
of  morality."  Behind  him  come  the  negro 
who  wants  it  understood  that  the  white 
man  has  no  rights  which  the  negro  is  bound 
to  respect;  the  loafer  who  wants  "  every- 
body to  have  a  share  of  everybody  else's 
property,"  and  so  on.  As  a  fitting  climax  to 
the  whole  outrageous  assault,  Lincoln  is  rep- 
resented as  addressing  these  followers  and 
saying:  "  Xow,  my  friends,  I'm  almost  in 
and  the  Millennium  is  going  to  begin,  so  ask 
what  you  will  and  it  shall  be  granted  !  " 

When  we  resurrect  this  infamous  car- 
toon from  oblivion,  now  that  Lincoln's  fame 
is  the  most  resplendent  in  our  national  his- 
tory, and  his  name  the  best  beloved,  we 
realize  that  the  charge  of  promoting  Free 
Love  is  a  poisoned  arrow  rarely  absent  from 
the  quiver  of  the  cowardly  and  unscrupulous 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  93 

defenders  of  Privilege  and  foes  of  Prog- 
ress. Today  the  charge  is  made  against  the 
Socialist  movement  —  made  by  dignitaries  of 
the  Christian  Church,  by  eminent  political 
leaders  and  publicists  —  with  as  little  truth 
and  justice  as  against  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
Liberator. 

VII 

Putting  aside,  as  wholly  irrelevant  to  an 
intelligent  and  candid  discussion  of  Social- 
ism, all  such  schemes  as  those  of  Plato 
and  Campanella,  of  Adamites,  Apostol- 
icans,  Shakers,  Perfectionists  and  Mormons, 
let  us  see  what  evidence  there  is  to  support 
the  charge  that  Socialism  is  antagonistic  to 
monogamic  marriage  and  family  life. 

At  the  very  outset  of  our  investigation 
we  encounter,  in  the  writings  of  individual 
Socialists,  some  very  outspoken  criticisms  of 
marriage  and  the  family  as  they  exist  today, 
together  with  prophecies  that  in  the  Socialist 
society  of  the  future  little  or  no  social  author- 
ity or  control  over  the  union  of  the  sexes  will 
exist.  In  some  cases,  it  must  be  admitted, 


94       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

the  authors  of  these  criticisms  have  been 
prominently  identified  with  the  Socialist 
movement.  The  opponents  of  Socialism 
have  carefully  winnowed  the  vast  literature 
of  Socialism  and  gathered  together  a  sheaf 
of  such  criticisms  and  prophecies,  which  they 
have  published  broadcast  to  bolster  the 
charge  of  Free  Love.  Let  us,  then,  pay 
them  due  attention. 

For  the  sake  of  convenience  we  will  take 
the  most  outspoken  of  these  criticisms  and 
prophecies  and  divide  them  into  two  groups 
—  those  which  come  from  individual  Social- 
ists, of  no  particular  standing  in  the  Social- 
ist movement,  however  eminent  they  may 
otherwise  be,  and  those  which  come  from 
representative  Socialists  of  acknowledged 
eminence  in  the  Socialist  movement  itself. 

To  the  first  of  these  groups  belongs,  very 
definitely,  the  prophecy  of  that  splendid  but 
ill-starred  genius  whose  melancholy  ruin 
ranks  among  the  most  tragic  episodes  of  liter- 
ary history  —  Oscar  Wilde.  Though  he 
was  never  identified  with  the  Socialist  move- 


THE   MOTHER'S   FEAR  95 

ment  —  perhaps  because  he  was  too  aggres- 
sively individualistic -- Wilde,  for  a  brief 
space  of  time,  called  himself  a  Socialist.  He 
wrote,  it  will  be  remembered,  The  Soul  of 
Alan  Under  Socialism,  in  wyhich  his  Utopian 
conception  of  Socialism  is  set  forth  In  noble 
and  beautiful  prose.  In  it  we  find  the  sweep- 
ing declaration,  quite  unqualified,  that  "  So- 
cialism annihilates  family  life."  For  this  as- 
sertion there  is  offered  no  shred  of  authority, 
no  evidence,  no  reasoned  argument  to  show 
that  the  annihilation  of  family  life  must  re- 
sult from  the  social  readjustments  upon  which 
Socialists  are  determined  and  agreed.  What 
we  have  is  the  bare  assertion  of  Oscar  Wilde. 
Immediately,  a  number  of  questions  crowd 
the  brain  —  how  authoritative  an  exponent 
of  Socialism  is  Oscar  Wilde? — Is  his  So- 
cialism representative,  typical  of  the  Social- 
ism which  is  inspiring  millions?  —  How 
much  does  he  know  of  his  subject?  We  seek 
an  answer  to  our  questions  in  his  essay,  com- 
paring his  utterances,  and  the  spirit  of  them, 
with  those  of  the  recognized  leaders  of  So- 


96       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

cialist  thought.  And  soon  we  discover  that  he 
is  not  a  Socialist  at  all,  if  we  are  to  judge  So- 
cialism by  Marx  and  Lassalle  and  Liebknecht 
and  Kautsky  and  Bebel  and  Vandervelde  and 
Jaures  and  Hyndman  and  Hillquit;  or  by  the 
platforms  of  the  Socialist  parties  of  the 
world.  He  is  rather,  like  Prince  Kropotkin, 
an  Anarchist-Communist.  Years  later,  in 
his  De  Profundls,  written  while  in  prison, 
Wilde  wrote  of  Kropotkin  that  his  was  one 
of  the  two  most  perfect  lives  he  had  come 
across  — "  a  man  with  a  soul  of  that  beauti- 
ful white  Christ  which  seems  coming  out  of 
Russia."  It  was  the  praise  of  the  master 
by  his  disciple. 

The  evidences  that  he  was  an  Anarchist- 
Communist,  rather  than  a  Socialist,  are 
numerous.  Thus,  in  his  essay  he  insists  over 
and  over  again  that  there  shall  be  no  govern- 
ment in  his  ideal  society:  "  What  is  needed 
is  Individualism.  If  the  Socialism  is  to  be 
Authoritarian;  if  there  are  Governments 
armed  with  economic  power  as  they  are  now 
with  political  power;  if,  in  a  word,  we  are 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  97 

to  have  Industrial  Tyrannies,  then  the  last 
state  of  man  will  be  worse  than  the  first." 
Again:  "  It  is  clear,  then,  that  no  Authori- 
tarian Socialism  will  do.  .  .  .  Every  man 
must  be  left  quite  free  to  choose  his  o\vn 
work.  No  form  of  compulsion  must  be  exer- 
cised over  him.  .  .  .  And  by  work  I  simply 
mean  activity  of  any  kind."  And  again: 
"  But  I  confess  that  many  of  the  Socialistic 
views  that  I  have  come  across  seem  to  me 
to  be  tainted  with  ideas  of  authority,  if  not 
of  actual  compulsion.  Of  course,  authority 
and  compulsion  are  out  of  the  question.  All 
association  must  be  quite  voluntary.  It  is 
only  in  voluntary  associations  that  man  is 
fine." 

These  are  the  ideas  of  an  Anarchist-Com- 
munist, not  of  a  Socialist  as  that  term  is 
properly  used.  When  we  read  in  Wilde's 
essay  that  "  Socialism  annihilates  family  life. 
.  .  .  With  the  abolition  of  private  property, 
marriage  in  its  present  form  must  disap- 
pear," we  know  that  Wilde  was  really  think- 
ing of  Anarchist  Communism  and  not  of 


98       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

Socialism  as  we  understand  it.  And  even 
were  that  not  the  case,  even  if  Wilde  had 
been  the  most  orthodox  of  Marx's  disciples, 
it  would  still  be  sufficient  to  remind  our 
critics  that  Wilde  embarked  upon  the  dan- 
gerous ocean  of  prophecy  upon  his  own  re- 
sponsibility; that  for  the  personal  views  of 
Wilde  the  Socialist  movement  cannot  be  held 
responsible. 

To  the  same  group  we  must  assign  the 
declaration  of  a  very  different  writer,  Pro- 
fessor Karl  Pearson,  author  of  The  Ethic 
of  Free  Thought.  Although  a  professed  So- 
cialist, and  a  learned  and  brilliant  writer 
upon  certain  biological  subjects,  Professor 
Pearson  has  never  been  actively  identified 
with  the  Socialist  movement,  nor  can  he  be 
justly  called  a  representative  Socialist  writer. 
Professor  Pearson  speculates  upon  the  prob- 
able influence  of  the  political  and  economic 
emancipation  of  women  upon  marriage.  He 
reaches  a  conclusion  that  appears  to  involve 
serious  difficulty:  "  For  the  non-childbear- 
ing  woman  the  sex  relationship,  both  as  to 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  99 

form  and  substance,  ought  to  be  a  pure  ques- 
tion of  taste,  in  which  neither  the  society  nor 
the  state  would  have  any  need  to  interfere,  a 
free  sexual  union,  a  relation  solely  of  mutual 
sympathy  and  affection,  its  form  and  direc- 
tion varying  according  to  the  wants  and  feel- 
ings of  the  individuals."  4  So  far,  we  have 
the  Anarchist  ideal,  entire  freedom  from  so- 
cial authority  and  control.  But  it  will  be 
observed  that  Professor  Pearson  confines  this 
freedom  from  social  interference  to  the  child- 
less unions.  But  what  of  those  unions  which 
result  in  children? 

When  Professor  Pearson  reaches  this 
question  he  abandons  his  Anarchistic  ideal  of 
pure  voluntarism,  and  turns  to  a  form  of 
state  supervision  which  is  essentially  despotic. 
The  state  now  must  interfere,  for  the  state 
is  to  regulate  the  number  of  births.  He 
harks  back  to  the  teachings  of  Aristotle  and 
Plato:  the  state  is  to  regulate  procreation. 
''  If  the  state  is  to  guarantee  wages,  it  is 

4  KARL  PEARSON,    The   Ethic   of  Free    Thought,  quoted 
by  BARKER,  British  Socialism,  p.  339. 


ioo       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

bound  in  self-protection  to  provide  that  no 
person  shall  be  born  without  its  consent. 
The  state  is  to  sanction  the  number  of  births; 
all  others  are  immoral,  because  anti-social. 
.  .  .  An  unsanctioned  birth  would  receive  no 
recognition  from  the  state,  and  in  times  of 
over-population  it  might  be  necessary  to 
punish,  positively  or  negatively,  both  father 
and  mother."  5  Surely,  here  we  turn  away 
from  Free  Love  to  state  despotism  of  the 
worst  type ! 

On  the  one  hand  Professor  Pearson's  ideal 
is  purely  Anarchistic,  utterly  repudiating  so- 
cial authority  and  responsibility  in  the  regu- 
lation of  marriage.  On  the  other  hand  it 
becomes  frightfully  bureaucratic,  utterly  de- 
nying personal  freedom  and  placing  human 
mothers  on  a  level  with  brood  mares.  It  is 
inconceivable  that  the  citizens  of  a  free 
democracy  would  tolerate  the  bureaucratic 
regulation  of  procreation.  Such  a  scheme 
would  require  the  power  of  a  dominant  ruling 
class  to  impose  it  upon  a  subject  class  in  some 

5  PEARSON,  op.  at.,  quoted  by  BARKER,  op.  at.,  p.  347. 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR 


such  fashion  as  the  Jesuits  imposed  the  stirpi- 
cultural  regulations  of  Campanella's  Utopian 
scheme  upon  the  natives  of  Paraguay.  Prob- 
ably nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  Socialists 
out  of  every  thousand  would  repudiate  Pro- 
fessor Pearson's  scheme.  It  is  of  interest 
and  value  only  as  the  result  of  one  man's 
rather  reckless  speculation  and  hazy  think- 
ing. 

VIII 

Of  all  the  statements  upon  the  subject  by 
individual  writers  who  cannot  be  said  to  be 
representative  Socialists,  used  by  the  anti- 
Socialists  in  their  propaganda,  the  statements 
by  Oscar  Wilde  and  Professor  Pearson  are 
the  most  sweeping.  They  are  certainly  the 
most  important  by  virtue  of  the  eminence  of 
their  authors  in  certain  fields  of  intellectual 
labor.  Let  us  turn  now  to  those  writers 
whose  prominence  in  the  Socialist  move- 
ment itself  lends  to  their  utterances  special 
force: 

The  foremost  Socialist  of  our  generation 
was  the  late  August  Bebel,  the  veteran  leader 


io2       SOCIALISM    AN7D    MOTHERHOOD 

of  the  German  Social  Democracy.  No  one 
will  deny  that  he  personified  the  Socialist 
movement  as  fully  as  any  one  human  being 
could  do.  It  is  impossible  to  plead  that  he 
was  not  a  representative  Socialist.  His  long 
acknowledged  eminence  in  the  international 
Socialist  movement  lends  great  weight  to  his 
every  utterance.  It  is  not  surprising,  there- 
fore, that  the  enemies  of  Socialism  have 
seized  upon  certain  passages  in  his  writings 
which  vigorously  assail  the  present  marriage 
system. 

In  his  famous  book,  Woman  and  Social- 
ism, Bebel  attacks  legal  marriage  as  a  form  of 
slavery  and  sex  subjection,  and  argues  that  it 
must  disappear  with  the  elevation  of  women 
to  a  plane  of  political,  economic  and  cultural 
equality  with  men.  In  its  place,  he  predicts, 
there  will  be  simply  a  voluntary  union  of  in- 
dividuals, a  union  depending  solely  upon  af- 
fection, with  which  society  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do,  and  which  the  individuals  can 
terminate  at  will.  There  can  be  no  mistak- 
ing the  meaning  of  the  following  paragraph, 


T  PI  E    M  O  T  H  E  R  '  S    F  E  A  R  103 

in  which  Bebel  sets  forth  his  idea  of  the  re- 
lation of  the  sexes  in  the  future: 

"  In  the  choice  of  love  woman  is  free  just 
as  man  is  free.  She  woos  and  is  wooed  and 
has  no  other  inducement  to  bind  herself  than 
her  own  free  will.  The  contract  between  the 
two  lovers  is  of  a  private  nature  as  in  primi- 
tive times.  The  gratification  of  the  sexual 
impulse  is  as  strictly  the  personal  affair  of 
the  individual  as  the  gratification  of  every 
other  natural  instinct.  No  one  has  to  give 
an  account  of  him  or  herself,  and  no  third 
person  has  the  slightest  right  of  interven- 
tion." 

It  is  impossible  to  read  Bebel's  work  with 
candor  and  intelligence  without  reaching  the 
conclusion  that  the  ideal  it  preaches  is  Free 
Love.  This  is  not  the  same  thing  as  sexual 
promiscuity,  nor  is  it  incompatible  with  strict 
monogamy.  What  is  meant  is  that  the  force 
of  love  alone  ought  to  bind  man  and  wife 
together,  without  any  external  compulsions, 
either  of  government,  economic  dependence 
or  social  customs;  that  every  marriage  which 


104       SOCIALISM   AND    MOTHERHOOD 

depends  upon  any  or  all  of  these  external 
compulsions,  which  love  alone  is  not  strong 
enough  to  perpetuate,  ought  to  be  dissolved 
in  the  interests  of  morality  and  happiness. 

This  is  the  personal  opinion  of  August 
Bebel,  for  which  he  alone  is  to  be  held  re- 
sponsible. It  is  probable  that  not  one  per 
cent,  of  the  Socialists  of  America,  or  of  the 
world  for  that  matter,  agree  with  it.  The 
Socialist  movement  is  no  more  to  be  charged 
with  responsibility  for  Bebel's  idea  of  the 
probable  future  development  of  marriage 
and  family  life,  than  for  the  views  on  vege- 
tarianism, agriculture  and  the  fertilization  of 
soils  contained  in  the  same  volume.  It  is  no 
more  to  be  charged  with  responsibility  for 
Bebel's  views  on  any  of  these  subjects  than 
for  the  views  which  the  present  writer  has 
freely  expressed  upon  the  laws  of  popula- 
tion and  the  relation  of  advancing  civiliza- 
tion to  such  phenomena  as  the  decline  of 
fecundity  and  maternal  capacity,6  for  ex- 

6  See,  e.  g.,   The  Common  Sense  of  the  Milk  Question, 
by  JOHN  SPARGO. 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  105 

ample.  Bebel  himself,  with  his  usual  can- 
dor, has  warned  us  of  this,  but  it  suits  the 
critics  of  Socialism  to  ignore  the  warning.7 
It  would  be  utterly  disingenuous  to  dis- 
miss the  subject  with  this  observation,  and  to 
ignore  the  fact  that  other  Socialists  of 
acknowledged  standing  have  expressed  views 
quite  similar  to  those  of  the  great  German 

7  "...  This  complete  solution  of  the  Women's  Ques- 
tion is  as  unattainable  as  the  solution  of  the  Labor  Ques- 
tion under  the  existing  social  and  political  institutions. 

"  My  fellow  Socialists  will  agree  with  the  last  prop- 
osition, but  I  am  not  at  present  in  a  position  to  affirm 
that  they  will  agree  to  the  manner  in  which  I  foresee  its 
realization.  I  must  therefore,  request  readers,  and 
especially  opponents,  to  regard  the  following  statements 
as  the  expression  of  my  personal  opinions,  and  to  direct 
any  attacks  they  think  fit  to  make  against  me  alone.  .  .  . 
Indeed  /  lia-ce  every  reason  to  believe  that  my  explicit 
request  icv'//  be  disregarded  by  a  certain  number  of  them. 
They  must  be  left  to  the  promptings  of  their  own  hearts." 
Thus  Bebel  wrote  in  the  Preface  to  If  o  man  and  Social- 
ism. How  accurately  he  judged  the  honesty  of  his 
opponents  may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  an  examina- 
tion of  over  six  hundred  books,  pamphlets  and  magazine 
articles  in  which  his  words  are  quoted  to  prove  that 
Socialists  advocate  Free  Love,  shows  that  not  in  a  single 
instance  is  there  any  intimation  of  the  important  fact  that 
Bebel  specifically  states  that  he  is  unable  to  claim  that 
his  fellow  Socialists  accept  his  views! — J.  S. 


io6       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

Socialist.  We  may  cite  the  eminent  collabo- 
rators, William  Morris  and  Ernest  Belfort 
Bax  as  typical  of  those  of  a  not  inconsider- 
able body  of  Socialist  writers  who  adhere 
more  or  less  closely  to  Bebel.  Morris,  in 
his  Utopian  romance,  News  from  Nowhere, 
pictures  complete  voluntarism  in  the  union 
of  the  sexes,  everybody  "  free  to  come  and 
go  as  he  or  she  pleases."8  In  Socialism: 
Its  Growth  and  Outcome,  Morris  and  Bax 
argue  that  marriage  as  it  now  exists  is  a 
property  relation  merely,  and  that  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  economic  dependence  of  women 
would  necessarily  lead  to  the  abolition  of  the 
marriage  system  resting  upon  it: 

"  The  present  marriage  system  was  based 
on  the  general  supposition  of  the  economic 
dependence  of  the  woman  on  the  man,  and 
the  consequent  necessity  for  his  making  pro- 
vision for  her  which  she  can  legally  enforce. 
This  basis  would  disappear  with  the  advent 
of  social  economic  freedom,  and  no  binding 

s  News  from  Nowhere,  Tenth  Edition,  p.  90. 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  107 

contract  would  be  necessary  between  the  par- 
ties as  regards  livelihood.  .  .  .  Thus  a  new 
development  of  the  family  would  take  place, 
on  the  basis,  not  of  a  predetermined  life-long 
business  arrangement  to  be  formally  and  nom- 
inally held  to,  irrespective  of  circumstances, 
but  on  mutual  inclination  and  affection,  an  as- 
sociation terminable  at  the  will  of  either 
party.  There  would  be  no  vestige  of  repro- 
bation weighing  on  the  dissolution  of  one  tie 
and  the  forming  of  another."  !) 

Bax  has  vigorously  championed  the  same 
view  in  numerous  essays.  A  typical  state- 
ment of  his  position  is  the  following: 

"  Socialism  will  strike  at  the  root  at  once 
of  compulsory  monogamy  and  of  prostitu- 
tion by  inaugurating  an  era  of  marriage 
based  on  free  choice  and  intention,  and  char- 
acterized by  the  absence  of  external  coercion. 
For  where  the  wish  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  marriage  relation  remains,  there  external 
coercion  is  unnecessary;  where  it  is  neces- 

9  Socialism:  Its  Growth  and  Outcome,  Second  Edition, 
London,    1896,    p.    299. 


io8       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

sary,  because  the  wish  has  disappeared,  there 
it  is  undesirable."  10 

It  is  no  more  than  just  to  point  out  in  this 
connection  the  fact  that  upon  all  matters  con- 
cerning the  relation  of  Socialism  to  women 
Bax  holds  a  peculiar  position  in  the  move- 
ment. His  anti-feminist  views  have  been  al- 
most universally  condemned  and  ridiculed. 
He  is  a  notorious  opponent  of  the  demand 
for  equal  suffrage  regardless  of  sex  which 
holds  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  programme 
of  every  Socialist  party  in  the  world.  He 
argues  that  women  are  organically  inferior 
to  men,  and  ought,  for  that  reason,  to  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  right  to  vote,  just  as  children 
and  aliens  belonging  to  an  essentially  lower 
race  are  excluded!  He  adopts  all  the  argu- 
ments of  the  conventional  anti-suffragists,  in- 
cluding the  fear  that  women,  if  granted  the 
ballot,  will  establish  a  sex  tyranny  and  sub- 
ject men  to  their  rule!  n  All  this  is  not  an 

10  BAX,    Outlooks   from    the   Ne<w  Standpoint,  pp.    159- 
160. 

11  See,   e.   g.,    in    his    Essays   in   Socialism,   the   following 
essays:     "A    Bundle    of    Fallacies;"    "The    'Monstrous 


THE   MOTHER'S   FEAR  109 

argument  against  his  views  concerning  the 
probable  nature  of  sex  relationships  under 
Socialism,  but  it  is  an  argument  against  an 
uncritical  acceptance  of  them  as  typical  of 
the  views  generally  held  by  Socialists. 

IX 

We  cannot  deny  that  some  Socialists  have 
preached  Free  Love  as  the  ideal  form  of  sex 
relationship.  But  we  can  and  must  deny  that 
the  realization  of  the  Socialist  programme 
necessarily  leads  to  that  ideal.  We  can  and 
must  deny  that  the  Socialist  movement  ac- 
cepts it.  We  can  and  must  affirm  that  Free 
Love  is  based  upon  the  Anarchist  philosophy 
of  the  independence  of  the  individual  and 
the  supremacy  of  the  individual  will;  that  it 
involves  a  complete  denial  of  the  Socialist 
philosophy  of  the  interdependence  of  all  in- 
dividuals and  the  consequent  supremacy  of 
society.  The  non-interference  of  society  and 
the  unrestricted  freedom  of  individual  action 

Regiment '  of  Womanhood ;  "  "  Some  Current  Fallacies 
on  the  Woman  Question;"  "Female  Suffrage  and  Its 
Implications." 


i  io       S  O  C  I  A  L  I  S  M    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

in  matters  of  such  social  consequence  as  mar- 
riage and  childbearing  are  the  postulates  of 
crude  individualism,  no  matter  how  eminent 
the  Socialist  who  embraces  them  may  be. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  philosophy  or  pro- 
gramme of  Socialism  which  is  incompatible 
with  the  maintenance  of  the  private  family 
based  upon  monogamic  marriage.  Probably 
ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the  Socialists  in  the 
world  believe  that  Socialism  would  result  in 
a  much  greater  degree  of  monogamy  than 
now  obtains,  and,  as  a  result,  in  a  greater  de- 
gree of  stability  and  permanence  in  marriage. 
They  believe  that  the  economic  readjustment 
essential  to  the  realization  of  the  Socialist 
programme  would  have  the  effect  of  making 
mutual  affection  the  only  reason  for  con- 
tracting marriage,  thus  doing  away  with  love- 
less marriages  for  mercenary  reasons,  which 
so  often  prove  failures  and  end  in  divorce. 
They  believe,  too,  that  when  women  are  eco- 
nomically equal  with  men,  and  politically 
equal  with  them,  they  will  insist  upon  a  single 
standard  of  morals  for  both  sexes  —  upon 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR 


men  being  as  strictly  monogamous  as  they  re- 
quire women  to  be. 

Lamartine,  in  his  rhetorical  History  of  the 
Revolution  of  1848,  repeats  the  ancient  apho- 
rism that  "  Communism  of  goods  leads,  as  a 
necessary  consequence,  to  communism  of 
wives,  children  and  parents,"  and  many  a 
foolish  criticism  of  Socialism  has  been  based 
upon  it.  But  in  truth  the  criticism  is  wholly 
irrelevant.  Modern  Socialism  does  not  aim 
at  "  communism  of  goods."  It  may  be  freely 
conceded  that,  in  olden  times,  when  produc- 
tion by  hand  labor  obtained,  it  was  practi- 
cally impossible  successfully  to  combine  com- 
munism in  the  distribution  of  goods  with  the 
maintenance  of  separate  family  life.  There 
was  always  the  danger  of  hoarding  by  the 
separate  families  to  the  prejudice  of  the 
community.  There  was  also  the  very  real 
danger  of  overpopulation.  Aristotle  recog- 
nized this  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago. 

But  modern  Socialism  is  not  seeking  to 
bring  about  communism  in  goods.  It  is  not 
aiming  at  the  abolition  of  private  property. 


ii2       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

What  it  is  aiming  at  is  the  collective  owner- 
ship of  those  means  of  production  which  are 
now  used  by  the  few  to  exploit  the  many. 
Under  capitalism,  we  have  cooperative  pro- 
duction by  masses  of  workers,  using  privately 
owned  machinery  and  tools,  with  the  result 
that  the  owners  of  the  machinery  and  tools, 
without  laboring  as  producers,  can  and  do 
receive  more  of  the  products  than  the  pro- 
ducers. Socialism  would  simply  shift  the 
ownership  of  machinery  and  tools  to  the  com- 
munity, deny  the  non-producers'  right  to  ex- 
ploit the  producers,  and  combine  collective 
ownership  of  the  means  of  production  with 
private  ownership  of  the  goods  produced,  the 
workers  receiving  according  to  their  labor. 

Acceptance  of  this  programme  does  not 
imply  the  acceptance  of  any  particular  theory 
or  forecast  of  the  future  development  of 
marriage  and  family  life.  That  this  is  the 
case  is  easily  shown :  consider  the  Socialist 
principle  of  collective  ownership  and  control 
coupled  with  private  enjoyment  of  the 
utilities  derived  therefrom  as  illustrated  by 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  113 

our  streets  and  highways.  Does  the  collec- 
tive ownership  of  streets  and  highways  im- 
peril marriage  and  the  family?  Would  these 
institutions  be  safer  if  streets  and  highways 
were  owned  by  private  individuals  or  by  cor- 
porations? If  not,  is  there  any  good  rea- 
son for  believing  that  the  extension  of  the 
same  principle  to  the  ownership  of  street 
railways  and  highways  of  steel  rails  \vould 
imperil  the  family  and  the  home?  Is  there 
any  reason  to  suppose  that  family  life  is  less 
safe  where  public  ownership  of  railways  pre- 
vails, as  in  Australia,  for  example?  Sup- 
pose we  applied  the  principle  of  collective 
ownership  to  telephones  and  telegraphs,  to 
the  supply  of  electric  light  and  power,  to  the 
express  service,  to  the  water  supply  and  the 
ice  supply,  is  there  any  good  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  the  result  would  be  Free  Love 
and  the  destruction  of  private  family  life? 
I  las  that  been  the  result  where  these  things 
have  been  tried? 

Carry   the   principle    farther,    apply   it   to 
the   industrial   activities  of  the  nation:   sup- 


ii4       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

pose  that,  as  a  result  of  the  revolt  of  the 
people  against  the  exactions  of  the  Meat 
Trust,  the  business  of  raising,  killing,  packing 
and  selling  meat  were  taken  over  by  the 
people,  through  the  government.  Would 
the  fact  that  we  bought  our  meat  from  a  state 
or  municipal  shop,  as  we  now  buy  stamps 
from  the  post  office,  knowing  that  we  were 
not  being  exploited  by  a  parasitic  corpora- 
tion, weaken  the  bonds  uniting  husbands  and 
wives,  lessen  our  love  for  our  children,  or 
otherwise  imperil  family  life?  Would  such 
evils  result  from  the  collective  ownership  of 
the  coal  mines,  the  substitution  of  organized 
society  as  a  whole  for  the  Steel  Trust,  or  the 
Oil  Trust? 

But  there  are  other  forms  of  collective 
ownership  than  ownership  by  the  govern- 
ment. The  cooperation  of  workers  in  vol- 
untary copartnership,  cooperatively  owning 
their  tools  and  sharing  their  products,  may 
well  become  a  very  important  part  of  the 
economic  organization  of  the  Socialist  com- 
monwealth. Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  the 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  n5 

workers  in  a  given  industry,  say  tailoring,  de- 
velop cooperative  enterprise  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  whoever  buys  a  suit  of  clothes  will 
know  that  the  tailors  who  made  the  clothes 
got  the  full  value  of  their  labor,  that  no  part 
of  the  price  of  the  clothes  represents  surplus 
value  in  the  shape  of  rent,  interest  or  profit. 
Will  that  fact  be  likely  to  make  husbands  and 
wives  forsake  each  other  and  seek  new  matri- 
monial alliances,  or  to  make  parents  love  their 
children  less,  or  in  any  other  way  imperil  the 
peace  and  harmony  of  family  life? 

An  honest  answer  to  these  questions  will 
prove  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  criti- 
cism we  are  considering.  It  is  not  without 
significance  that  among  all  the  thousands  of 
anti-Socialists  writers  who  have  made  the 
criticism,  not  one  seems  to  have  made  any  at- 
tempt to  demonstrate  in  what  manner  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  Socialist  programme 
would  tend  to  wreaken  or  destroy  the  family. 
The  nearest  they  ever  come  to  that  issue  is 
to  declare  that  the  private  family  could  not 
exist  if  private  property  were  abolished  and 


1 16       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

communism  completely  established.  Since 
Socialists  do  not  aim  at  the  abolition  of  pri- 
vate property  and  do  not  seek  to  bring  about 
communism,  the  declaration  has  no  bearing 
upon  the  subject. 

Too  much  stress  cannot  be  laid  upon  the 
fact  that  it  is  no  part  of  the  aim  of  modern 
Socialism  to  bring  about  a  particular  form  of 
marriage  or  family  organization.  Its  one 
aim  is  the  reorganization  of  our  political  and 
economic  life  to  the  end  that  there  shall  be 
no  exploitation  of  workers  by  idlers  through 
the  channels  of  rent,  interest  and  profit,  and 
no  class  warfare  as  a  necessary  outcome  of 
such  exploitation,  the  exploited  and  the  ex- 
ploiters struggling  for  the  advancement  of 
their  specific  economic  interests.  In  a  word, 
the  aim  of  Socialism  is  the  attainment  of 
complete  political  and  industrial  democracy. 
Individual  Socialists  may  join  to  the  most 
honest  and  loyal  service  to  that  aim  equally 
honest  and  loyal  service  to  other  ends  —  to 
vegetarianism,  anti-vivisection,  religion  or 
anti-religion,  proof  of  the  existence  of  Intel- 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  117 

ligent  beings  on  Mars,  demonstration  of  the 
Baconian  authorship  of  the  plays  attributed 
to  Shakespeare,  and  so  on  —  but  these  accre- 
tions are  no  concern  of  the  Socialist  move- 
ment. 

x 

Of  course,  the  reorganization  of  society 
upon  Socialist  lines  must  of  necessity  affect 
the  family.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  such 
a  fundamental  change  being  accomplished 
without  influencing  one  of  the  fundamental  in- 
stitutions of  society.  Every  great  compre- 
hensive change  in  the  economic  structure  of 
society  heretofore  has  had  a  marked  influence 
upon  family  life,  and  we  cannot  in  reason  ex- 
pect that  so  comprehensive  a  change  as  So- 
cialism will  prove  an  exception  to  the  general 
law  of  social  development.  It  is  this  fact 
which  causes  so  many  Socialists  and  others  to 
attempt  to  forecast  in  detail  the  exact  nature 
of  the  developments  of  marriage  and  family 
life  which  Socialism  will  bring  about. 

Xow,  only  the  foolishly  narrow-minded 
would  condemn  or  attempt  to  discourage  hon- 


n8       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

est  and  serious  thought  upon  a  matter  of  such 
vital  importance  to  the  life  of  the  race,  for 
such  thinking  is  a  necessary  condition  of  prog- 
ress. But  the  Socialist  movement  is  not 
committed  to  any  of  the  conclusions  reached 
by  these  individual  speculations.  There  is 
no  Socialist  theory  of  marriage. 

We  believe  that  the  reorganization  of  so- 
ciety upon  the  basis  of  collective  ownership 
and  democratic  control  of  the  economic  forces 
will  put  an  end  to  those  evils  which  now  men- 
ace the  integrity  and  stability  of  family  life. 
We  believe  that  marriage  for  economic  rea- 
sons will  disappear  with  the  abolition  of  eco- 
nomic classes  and  economic  exploitation. 
We  believe  that  the  greater  part  of  prostitu- 
tion with  its  attendant  evils  will  disappear. 
We  believe  the  elevation  of  family  life  will 
result.  We  do  not  believe  that  anything 
but  good  can  result  from  these  changes. 
Whatever  developments  in  family  organiza- 
tion take  place  in  the  Socialist  society  of  the 
future  will  be  in  response  to  the  collective 
will  of  men  and  women  free  from  political 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  119 

or  economic  tyranny.  Why  need  we  fear 
that  a  society  in  which  women  are  politically 
and  economically  free  and  equal  with  men  will 
tend  to  lessen  monogamy?  Ought  we  not 
rather  to  believe  and  hope  that  by  increasing 
the  power  of  women,  whose  monogamous  in- 
stincts have  been  much  more  highly  devel- 
oped than  the  monogamous  instincts  of  men, 
monogamy  will  be  greatly  strengthened? 

In  truth,  there  is  no  need  to  fear  Free 
Love  or  polygamy  or  group  marriage,  or  poly- 
andry. The  whole  trend  of  social  and  eco- 
nomic evolution  is  away  from  these  and  to- 
ward a  more  perfect  monogamy.  Anton 
Menger  is  undoubtedly  right  when  he  says 
that  the  defects  of  Free  Love  are  so  numer- 
ous and  so  serious  that,  even  if  all  the  polit- 
ical and  religious  forces  which  now  buttress 
monogamic  marriage  were  to  be  swept  away, 
"  the  masses  of  the  people  would  themselves 
refuse  to  permit  it."  12  And  Frederick 
Engels  is  right  when  he  bases  his  hope  for 
the  attainment  of  a  more  perfect  monogamy 

12  ANTON    MENGER,   Neue   Staatslehre,  p.    132. 


i2o       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

upon  the  economic  emancipation  of  women: 
"  Remove  the  economic  considerations  that 
now  force  women  to  submit  to  the  customary' 
disloyalty  of  men,  and  you  will  place  women 
on  an  equal  footing  with  men.  All  present 
experiences  prove  that  this  will  tend  much 
more  strongly  to  make  men  truly  monoga- 
mous, than  to  make  women  polyandrous."  13 
The  realization  of  true  monogamy  will  be 
made  possible  by  the  elevation  of  woman  to 
the  plane  of  economic  and  political  equality 
with  man.  To  that  end  the  Socialist  move- 
ment is  striving. 

The  Socialist  ideal  is  not  compatible  with 
the  destruction  of  social  authority  and  re- 
sponsibility comprehended  by  the  term  Free 
Love.  Nor  is  it  compatible  with  the  denial 
of  personal  freedom  essential  to  all  schemes 
for  compulsory  mating  and  applying  the 
methods  of  animal  breeding  to  human  beings. 
The  fundamental  democracy  of  Socialism  is 
as  inimical  to  the  one  as  to  the  other.  The 

13  FREDERICK   EKGEI.S,    Tlie   Origin   of  the   Family,  Pri- 
vate Property  and  the  State,  Chapter  III. 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR 


race  cannot  be  elevated  by  the  degradation 
of  individuals,  whether  in  the  direction  of 
the  harem  or  the  stud-farm. 

The  Socialist  ideal  involves  a  deeper  sense 
of  social  interdependence  and  responsibility, 
combined  with  a  larger  personal  freedom, 
than  has  ever  yet  existed.  All  the  observable 
tendencies  of  social  evolution  point  to  the 
further  development  of  social  sanctions  for 
marriage  and  parentage,  rather  than  to  their 
progressive  abandonment.  There  are  abun- 
dant signs  of  an  increasing  recognition  of  the 
need  for  well-considered  collective  action  aim- 
ing at  encouragement  of  marriage  and  pro- 
creation by  the  fit  and  worthy  and  the  dis- 
couragement of  marriage  and  procreation 
by  the  unfit  and  unworthy.  There  is  r.n 
increasing  demand  for  education  for  par- 
enthood, both  for  fathers  and  mothers. 
Especially  is  the  education  necessary  for 
mothers:  too  long  we  have  permitted  women 
to  enter  the  maternal  wilderness  blindfolded. 
Education  for  motherhood  will  mean  that 
maternal  functions  will  be  chosen  deliber- 


122       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

ately  and  intelligently,  with  a  full  sense  of 
all  their  attendant  perils  and  responsibilities. 

There  is  a  demand,  too,  for  the  adoption 
of  a  sane  and  humane  policy  of  permanently 
segregating  the  victims  of  mental  defects  and 
diseases  believed  to  be  transmissible.  These 
provide  an  enormous  proportion  of  the  re- 
cruits to  the  ranks  of  the  degenerate  classes 
—  the  habitual  drunkards,  the  prostitutes,  the 
purveyors  of  venereal  contagion,  the  criminal 
and  vicious  classes  in  general.  It  is  probable 
that,  long  before  the  Socialist  goal  is  attained, 
measures  will  be  taken  to  segregate  per- 
manently all  known  victims  of  mental  or 
physical  evils  known  to  be  incurable  and  trans- 
missible, and  to  prevent  them  from  burden- 
ing society  with  their  undesirable  offspring. 

There  is  little  reason  to  doubt  that  such 
social  safeguards  as  these  will  be  considerably 
developed  in  the  Socialist  society  of  the  fu- 
ture. Side  by  side  with  that  increase  of 
social  responsibility  will  be  developed  a  larger 
freedom  of  personal  choice  and  action  than 
has  ever  existed,  as  a  result  of  the  breaking 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR 


down  of  economic  compulsions.  Men  and 
women  will  be  free  to  marry  for  love  and  love 
only.  Probably,  too,  divorce  will  be  made 
more  easy  and  the  cessation  of  love  be  freely 
recognized  as  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  dis- 
solution of  marriage  ties,  especially  where 
there  are  no  children  concerned. 

So  much  we  may  say  with  assurance  con- 
cerning the  future  of  marriage  and  the 
family.  But  when  we  try  to  go  beyond  these 
limits,  to  forecast  the  future  and  picture  it 
in  detail  as  we  picture  the  present,  we  enter 
that  realm  which  is  ruled  by  no  law  other 
than  the  dreamer  fashions  for  his  own  dream. 
If  an  individual  Socialist  seeks  to  forecast 
that  future  and  tells  of  elaborate  systems  of 
endowed  or  salaried  motherhood,  we  may 
listen  with  what  degree  of  interest  and  faith 
we  will  :  his  vision  is  his  alone,  and  is  in  no- 
wise a  part  of  the  Socialist  programme. 

XI 

The  thoughtful  mother  will  not  fear  Social- 
ism when  it  is  presented  to  her  properly  de- 


124       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

limited.  She  will  separate  the  chaff  from  the 
wheat;  the  non-essential  Utopian  vision  of  the 
individual  from  the  great  essential  collec- 
tive purpose.  She  will  not  be  afraid  that  the 
elevation  of  her  sisters  to  a  plane  of  political 
and  economic  equality  with  men  wrill  demor- 
alize them  and  cause  them  to  use  their  power 
to  destroy  monogamy  and  the  private  family. 
She  will  not  be  afraid  that  the  abolition  of 
class  exploitation,  which  gives  rise  to  poverty, 
vice,  crime,  disease  and  war,  will  harm  a 
single  human  being.  She  will  not  be  afraid 
of  applying  to  society  as  a  whole  the  principle 
of  equal  opportunity  which  is  the  ruling  prin- 
ciple of  family  life. 

On  the  contrary,  she  will  welcome  So- 
cialism as  a  parched  flower  welcomes  the 
gentle  summer  rain.  She  will  hail  it  with 
joy  and  gladness,  firm  in  the  faith  that  it  will 
emancipate  womanhood  from  the  thralldom 
of  the  centuries,  glorify  motherhood,  protect 
the  home  and  insure  to  childhood  its  precious 
heritage  of  opportunity. 


THE    MOTHER'S    FEAR  125 

A^o  longer  the  Slave  of  Fear,  she  will  laugh 
Superstition  to  scorn  and  with  joy  take  the 
gifts  of  the  Angel. 


EPILOGUE 

SOCIALISM  is  most  fittingly  symbolized 
by  the  twofold  character  of  the  Spirit 
of  Motherhood. 

Defending  her  child  against  attack,  the  hu- 
man mother  matches  the  reckless  ferocity  of 
the  tigress  defending  her  cubs.  The  two 
mothers  are  sisters  in  their  savage  passion. 

But  toward  her  child  what  beautiful  tender- 
ness that  same  human  mother  displays  !  The 
gentle  kiss  of  the  dewdrop  upon  the  cheek 
of  the  rose  is  not  more  tender. 

So,  toward  the  enemies  of  childhood  the 
Spirit  of  Socialism  turns  with  savage  menace 
and  defiance,  and  cries  aloud  to  the  Masters 
of  Bread  —  to  the  Lords  of  Privilege  and 
Power  —  to  all  the  Despoilers  of  Little  Chil- 
dren: 

'  You  shall  not:  steal  the  bloom  of  health 

from  the  checks  of  the  children! —  You  shall 

not  darken   the  light  of  their  eyes! — You 

shall  not  banish  the  laughter  from  their  lips! 

126 


EPILOGUE  127 


—  You  shall  not  silence  the  songs  of  their 
hearts!  These  things  you  shall  not  do,  for, 
by  The  Eternal!  I,  the  Spirit  of  Social- 
ism, have  sworn  that  I  will  not  falter,  nor 
pause,  nor  rest,  nor  make  truce,  until  I  have 
destroyed  your  cruel  power  and  broken  down 
the  last  barrier  which  stands  between  a  hu- 
man child  and  its  right  to  all  the  glory  and 
beauty  and  joy  of  the  world." 

Then,  like  a  young  and  beautiful  mother, 
beckoning  her  child  and  watching  over  it  as 
it  comes  with  eager,  faltering  footsteps,  the 
Spirit  of  Socialism  stands  at  the  gateway  of 
the  Garden  of  Life,  bidding  the  children 
enter,  saying  tenderly: 

"  Come,  little  ones,  here  is  the  Garden  of 
Life.  Enter  and  pluck  for  yourselves  the 
flowers  of  Eife  and  Love  and  Joy  and 
Beauty!  They  are  yours!  They  were 
planted  for  you!  They  have  been  tended 
and  nurtured  for  you  through  all  the  ages 
of  human  sacrifice  and  labor.  Plere,  in  the 
midst  of  the  Garden,  are  the  King's  Treas- 
uries of  Art  and  Science  and  Philosophy  and 


128       SOCIALISM    AND    MOTHERHOOD 

Power.  Come!  Enter!  I  will  unlock  them 
for  you,  for  they  are  all  yours.  Wander 
where  you  will  and  take  freely  what  you  will, 
for  these  things  are  your  Heritage. —  And 
when  you  are  tired —  when  through  the  even- 
ing shadows  you  must  -pass  out  of  the  Gar- 
den of  Life  to  your  Rest  and  your  Dreams  — 
you  shall  leave  more  than  you  gathered,  even 
though  you  know  it  not. —  And  then,  when 
your  footsteps  are  no  longer  heard  in  the  Gar- 
den, and  your  voices  are  no  longer  mingled 
with  the  whisperings  of  the  /lowers,  other 
children  coining  after  you  shall  find  that  in 
your  footprints  flowers  of  unfading  beauty 
bloom.  They  shall  find  the  Garden  of  Life 
lovelier  because  you  lingered  and  played  in 
it;  the  King's  Treasuries  richer  because  you 
took  from  them  to  satisfy  your  needs  and 
added  to  them  new  treasures  of  your  own. — 
For  thus,  my  little  one's,  the  Glory  of  the 
Ages  is  kept  unfailing  and  undimmed. — 
Thus  has  your  Heritage  been  kept,  and  thus 
shall  it  be  maintained  for  all  children,  For- 
ever and  Forever!  " 


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